Spot a bus shelter in a dementia ward?

Yishun Community Hospital and Khoo Teck Puat Hospital have set up familiar landmarks to help put patients at ease

- Amrita Kaur

In the heart of Yishun Community Hospital's (YCH) dementia ward stands an unexpected structure — a bus shelter.

Unlike the bustling transit points scattered across the island, no buses stop here. Instead, it offers patients with dementia a sense of comfort and familiarity.

Ms Julia Lau, a senior staff nurse at YCH, conceived the idea of having a bus shelter in the ward after completing her advanced diploma in gerontology and undergoing dementia care training.

Working in an environment where 90 per cent of the patients have cognitive impairments, Ms Lau and her colleagues frequently encounter challenges in managing them as they tend to roam or become disoriented.

"It often takes considerable time to calm patients who are experiencing emotional breakdowns and confusion, especially when they express a strong desire to go home, even though they are still unfit for discharge," she says.

In an attempt to address the issue, Ms Lau and her team placed MRT and SMRT bus logos on the ward's glass doors, so patients would associate the doors with a transit station rather than an exit.

They hoped the logos would prevent patients from wandering out. However, the team realised these were not enough.

Although the logos were helpful, they were unable to convey the sense of familiarity or realism that a well-designed replica, such as a bus shelter or MRT station, can evoke.

While travelling along Upper Thomson Road in July 2024, Ms Faith Tan, nurse manager at YCH, noticed that the old bus shelters were being replaced with a new design.

She contacted the Land Transport Authority (LTA) to ask if any could be repurposed to support dementia care at the hospital. The authority put her in touch with its bus shelter contractor, Shincon Industrial.

Representatives from Shincon and LTA visited YCH to understand how the bus shelter would be used and the benefits it could offer.