Bus stop in hospital corridor to calm dementia patients
IT IS a familiar sight in an unexpected place – a bus stop in a narrow hospital corridor.
But while its appearance has left some patients scratching their heads, it’s no mistake.
These replica bus stops are being introduced in wards and A&E departments across the country – in an effort to help dementia patients.
It is believed that the familiarity of a bus stop will help calm the patients down if they become confused while in hospital. They also stop them wandering off in an attempt to find their way home from a real bus stop.
The latest place to implement a fake stop is Southend University Hospital, which has a sign, bench and timetable in its emergency department.
Sarah Ecclestone, a nurse at the Essex hospital, said: ‘Unfortunately,
‘Able to recall familiar things’
patients with dementia often have short-term memory problems and can become agitated in unfamiliar surroundings, often wandering, with the common theme of patients wanting to go home.
‘Although patients have short-term memory loss, they are often able to recall familiar, everyday landmarks from their long-term memory and a bus stop can be one of those.’
She added: ‘Research has found that individuals become much more relaxed at the sight of a bus stop, sitting down and waiting for their “bus home”. It is something they often become fixated upon and this installation will help put them at ease and take away some of that anxiety.’
The Southend stop was created with the help of transport firm Arriva. Colin Wright, the company’s general manager for Hertfordshire and Essex, said they were ‘ delighted’ to be involved with the project.
Fake bus stops have also been installed in A&E departments including at Leeds General Infirmary and Hillingdon Hospital in west London.
Another, at a ward in Grimsby Hospital has three pull-down seats beside a wall decorated with trees, flowers and birds.
Conquest Hospital in East Sussex reported a 60 per cent drop in dementia patients leaving their ward after installing a phantom bus stop.
The idea originated in Germany in 2008, when a nursing home looked at ways to stop patients disappearing. Benrath Senior Centre in Dusseldorf needed a solution as it did not have the power to detain confused patients and kept having to call police to retrieve them when they tried to return to their homes and families.
The problem was particularly dangerous in winter when dementia sufferers risked getting lost and spending the night out in the cold. The centre’s director, Richard Neureither, said that errant patients would wait at the stop before forgetting why they were there.
‘We will approach them and say that the bus is coming later today and invite them into the home for a coffee.’ He added: ‘Five minutes later they have completely forgotten they wanted to leave.’
FREE bus passes for the elderly help them to get more exercise, research suggests. They enable older folk to become more active by making it easier for them to leave their homes, researchers from University College London said. Pensioners get free bus travel in England – except in London, where anyone over 60 is eligible.