Abstract
Long-term Care (LTC) (a.k.a nursing homes, personal care homes, residential care facilities, lodges, assisted living facilities and supportive housing), is both a service and home providing health and personal care primarily to older adults who require support that can’t be met in the community due to challenges related to disability or health. The service is provided by a variety of workers (e.g., clinical, caregiving, administrative, housekeeping, food preparation, facilities management, and activity/ recreation staff) as well as volunteers. Long-term care’s intersection with the field of design is vast, including the design of homes, services, products, workplace technologies, assistive technologies, communication, and information. Design matters in this context. Despite this, design-related research has been largely absent in serving the sector compared to other healthcare domains, which our research team first discovered in examining the role of design in end-of-life and palliative care. To address this gap, students from Carleton University have been working in LTC design with Ontario’s Centres for Learning, Research and Innovation in Long-term Care (CLRI) at Bruyère and various LTC homes in Ontario. This collaboration has become a significant part of a larger research program, the Design for Public Health (D4pH) Lab, where students examine how ‘research for, into and through design’ informs the design of LTC systems, services, products, technologies, and homes. In this paper we profile the work of 4 graduate students to illustrate the integrated, systems design approach they took to study pressing issues in LTC. Students investigated the experiences of multi-site LTC workers during the pandemic and communicating the findings through creative mediums; spiritual care through service design methods; service design for individuals transitioning to LTC and advanced care planning; and a user experience study focused on understanding continence care at a systems level to support dignity and safety in this important care element.