The dying patient: taboo, controversy and missing terms of reference for designers - an architectural perspective

Bellamy, Anne, Clark, Sam ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4597-5162 and Anstey, Sally ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2295-3761 2022. The dying patient: taboo, controversy and missing terms of reference for designers - an architectural perspective. Medical Humanities 48 (1) , e2-e9. 10.1136/medhum-2020-011969

PDF - Accepted Post-Print Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial. Download (344kB)

Abstract

Contemporary society has grown seemingly detached from the realities of growing old and subsequently, dying. A consequence, perhaps, of death becoming increasingly over-medicalised, nearly one in two UK nationals die institutional deaths. In this article we, two architectural scholars engaged in teaching, research and practice and a nurse and healthcare scholar with a focus on end of life care and peoples experiences, wish to draw attention to a controversy resulting from a paucity in current literature on the terms of reference of the dying ‘patient’ as we navigate the future implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. This contributes to a relative lack of touchstones for architects to refer to when designing person-centred palliative care environments. Unlike common building types, architects are extremely unlikely to have lived experience of palliative care environments as patients; and therefore, require the help of healthcare professionals to imagine and empathise with the requirements of a person dying away from home. This paper includes a review of ageing and dying literature to understand, and distil from an architectural perspective, who, design professionals, are designing for and to remember the nuanced characteristics of those we hold a duty of care toward. We ask readers to heed the importance of accurate terms of reference, especially when commissioning and/or designing environments of palliative care. Furthermore, we put forward an appeal for interdisciplinary collaboration, to develop a framework for co-designing positive experiences of person-centred care and environments at the end of life.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Healthcare Sciences Architecture
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > NA Architecture
Publisher:	BMJ Publishing Group
ISSN:	1468-215X
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	29 September 2020
Date of Acceptance:	29 September 2020
Last Modified:	24 Nov 2024 00:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/135195

Citation Data

Cited 1 time in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item