A £450,000-plus healthcare project, reportedly England’s largest of its kind, at Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI), has improved the hospital environment for acute elderly care patients suffering from dementia.
Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has redeveloped Wards 23 and 29 at BRI through a six-month refurbishment scheme that attracted £50,000 in funding from The King’s Fund’s Enhancing the Healing Environment (EHE) programme (see also pages 63-66), a matching Department of Health contribution, and a £15,000 ‘top-up commitment’ from the Trust itself. The project brief was to look at how design and artwork could influence patient behaviour and improve the patient and staff environment. Special ‘memory boxes’, into which patients can place easily recognisable and memorable personal objects, alongside a descriptive caption, have been put by each bed. These have both helped them find their way back to their beds, and doubled as nostalgic ‘triggers’, by helping them reminisce about their past. In addition, oversized Kodak-style slide frames, backlit with LED lighting, feature interchangeable images provided by The Yorkshire Film Archive, based at York University. They include bygone scenes of Bradford and Yorkshire folk. The images came from entrants in a Trust-run, Yorkshirethemed, photographic competition. Leading the project is head of nursing, Dawn Parkes, who said: “This groundbreaking initiative for the Trust is already making a huge difference by clearly illustrating how relatively small changes can reduce anxiety, accidents, and challenging behaviour. Immediate improvements include reduced rates of falls, less agitation among patients, and reduced complaints from relatives. Our patients used to wander up and down the wards aimlessly. Now, they will sit more attentively on the special seats we have provided adjacent to the lightboxes and image boards. “They are much more orientated, and there is increased interaction with hospital staff, who, in turn, are better able to engage them in meaningful conversation.” Bradford-based New Vision Signs & Graphics provided the memory boxes, slide frames, and image boards, while another local firm, PEC Building & Shopfitting, was main contractor. Leeds-based Andy Edwards Design led on project design, while Bradford-born photographer, Ian Beesley, took pictures of patients and staff for use in the displays. Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is now working closely with Bradford Institute of Healthcare Research to evaluate of the EHE programme and its impact.
