Sustainable residential aged care: the influence of the built environment on carer work satisfaction and stress

The population in Australia and much of the developed world is ageing and increasing the demand on residential aged care (RAC) which is costly to establish and operate thereby imposing an economic burden on society and impacting upon social sustainability. Quality of life (QoL) for residents is a primary condition of RAC. Quality of care is a significant factor of QoL and is provided by the care team however, it can be affected by work stress/satisfaction. RAC facilities are work places for the care team and studies within the field of environmental psychology indicate that the work place environments can affect work stress/satisfaction impacting upon work outputs. This research investigates the potential for the RAC built environment to influence the work stress/satisfaction of the care team thereby impacting quality of care, affecting QoL and addressing concerns for the future on a number of levels. The research identifies a number of design influences (DI) and then, over two stages studies the DI within the context of work stress/satisfaction to identify the care team’s perception of the identified DI, their control over them (Stage 1) and the level of consideration facility managers and designers gave to the impact on care team work stress/satisfaction during the design process (Stage 2). Stage 1 comprises qualitative interviews with members of care teams where Stage 2 involves three case studies with qualitative interviews of three cohorts (care team, managers and designers) along with observations on site and desktop audits of documentation to corroborate comments made in interviews. The significance of this research is threefold: i) investigating the relationships of the identified DI, ii) identifying factors that affect the inclusion of DI in the design process, and iii) identifying a process to enable the DI to be appropriately incorporated into the RAC built environment in order to provide an optimal impact on the work stress/satisfaction of the Care Team.