How Better Building Design Can Help Improve Long-Term Care in Canada

Imagine having to call someone in the middle of the night to take you to a communal washroom or use a commode by your bed with only a thin curtain for privacy. Not because there isn’t a bathroom connected to your room, but because there isn’t enough room to turn a walker or a wheelchair around in it.

Jill Knowlton, a director of the Ontario Long Term Care Association (OLTCA), told Ontario’s Long-Term Care COVID-19 Commission in a Nov., 2020 presentation that some washrooms have a turning radius of less than a metre and a half. “If you get in,” she testified, “you can’t get out.”

For Dr. Diana Anderson, design is a parameter of care, as important as other determinants of health, such as where you live and what you eat. “We don’t talk about that a lot, but buildings have a huge impact on us,” says Anderson, a Boston-based doctor and architect who calls herself a “dochitect.” “It’s almost akin to a medical intervention. It has that much of an impact on people.”  

READ MORE HERE