Philip Y. Kao PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

The 3 rd Floor Layout
Many CCRCs, including Tacoma Pastures, are designed to have a section or floor
committed solely to dementia residents. At Tacoma Pastures, the Memory Care on the
third floor offered what the management called ‘dedicated cognitive support.’ The
director of the resident centre (which includes Memory Care) told me a few weeks after
I started working as a caregiver that, “Memory Care is a place where everyone feels safe.
We work hard to help them continue living, and to make sure that they have the support
they need. We do this by bringing our services like physical therapy to them, so that
they can maintain their dignity and sense of self.”
On the third floor of the main building there are three wings that constitute three
separate neighbourhoods. These neighbourhoods, which are named after three local
rivers, make up what is known officially in Tacoma Pastures as Memory Care. Because
the residents on the third floor suffer from Alzheimer’s and other dementia-related
symptoms such as Huntington’s, Parkinson’s, Diffuse Lewy Body, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob
Disease, each of these three wings are electronically locked. Additionally, taking the
elevator from the third floor requires entering a four-digit code. The caregivers who
work in Memory Care are usually assigned to just one of the neighbourhoods: Little Red,
Placid, or Clearview. Each neighbourhood has about twenty residents, ten residents on
each side of the hall. When I was working as a caregiver, a married couple occupied one
of the rooms. The husband had dementia, but the wife did not. After a month, the wife
moved downstairs to be on her own. The Little Red, Placid and Clearview
neighbourhoods have their own living rooms, which feature a fairly large television, and
a dining room, but no kitchen (see figure 4). The hospitality staff delivered hot meals up
from the ground floor using a trolley. Additionally, only one med tech was assigned to
the entire third floor, and each neighbourhood was assigned two working caregivers.
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