#8 2008 · Benrath Senior Centre · Elder careenter-their-reality
A nursing home built a bus stop where no bus comes, so wandering patients wait instead of vanish
the problem
Dementia patients kept escaping toward 'home', some boarding real buses across town
background
Dementia wards live with Weglauftendenz — the wandering urge. Patients leave to reach a remembered home, a job, children who are now grown; they walk into traffic with no memory of who they are. The standard answers, locked doors and sedation, are both a kind of defeat. Benrath's runaways had boarded real buses and been found across town.
Staff noticed the escapes shared a first stop: public transport. With the Rheinbahn transit company, the Benrath Senior Centre installed an exact replica bus stop outside the door in 2008 — correct sign, correct bench, no bus. The delusion is met instead of fought: the patient waits, the urge outlives its own memory in a few minutes, and a nurse comes out to say the bus is late and offer tea inside.
the move
Staff noticed runaways head for public transport, so they put a genuine-looking bus stop at the door. Patients sit and wait; a nurse says the bus is late and offers tea; the urge passes with the memory of it.
the payoff
Escapes at large stopped without locks or sedation; the fake stop spread across German and European care homes.
what came after
Escapes at large simply stopped, without a single new lock. The fake stop spread across German care homes and into Europe, and started a running ethics debate about benevolent deception in dementia care — one the care literature has largely settled in the bus stop's favour: it trades a lie the patient cannot hold onto for restraints they would feel all day.
references
- [1]Fake bus stop helps Alzheimer's patientsFast Company, 2010fastcompany.com
- [2]The phantom bus stopHektoen International, 2017hekint.org