Sensory Room For Dementia Patients

Our goal is to stimulate the senses that are sight, sound and touch.
ttps://abanyanresidence.com
Hi, I’m Blake Anderson and I am with A Banyan Residence. So a challenge that we face every day is creating an enrichment program that reaches the full spectrum of both assisted living and memory care.
While we have a team of dedicated enrichment coordinators to create these new activities and to sponsor them every 30 minutes during the day, specifically in order to reach each person, we sometimes find that at the advanced side of the impairment spectrum, it is more difficult to reach some of that audience.
So what we came up with is this idea of our own sensory room and fundamentally what we’re trying to do is stimulate some of the core fundamental senses.
In our sensory room, our goal is to stimulate the senses that are sight, sound and touch. The way we do this is it’s a multi-pronged approach where it may be a texture board where a resident can fidget with some of the different items on the board and generate that physiological response to touch or to sight when they see the glow-in-the-dark waterfall landscape. We also have these heated massage recliners as well as dementia-specific rocking chairs.
We accomplish sight in a number of different ways. One may be that we have these bundles of lighted fiber optic cables where residents can fidget with them and let them illuminate in front of their eyes.
Secondly we do have a home theater projector that is playing old movies from ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s throughout the day and then finally we do have a projector where we actually partnered with a start-up from Barcelona in creating this and what it does is it displays video on all three walls including the ceiling. For somebody with dementia or a cognitive impairment, when they see swimming with dolphins, dolphins floating over their head or sitting on a beach in Mallorca, Spain or even riding a roller coaster at Six Flags, it quite literally feels like they’ve been transported to a completely different world and some of the bright colors and these sounds really bring out some core stimulation.
We’ve had instances where we’ve had residents that are largely non-verbal and when we put them in the sensory room and let them experience some of these different platforms and different worlds, we actually see this amazing cognitive response where they are verbal, they are participating in back and forth dialogue. The mental benefits manifest themselves in incredible ways and the benefits are extraordinary.
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With respect for the personal taste and preference of each resident our professional, caring staff helps to create purpose and meaningful days so that each of our residents can enjoy the quality of life that they deserve. At A Banyan Residence Assisted Living and Memory Care, we are fully committed to providing our residents with superior individual care service, a quality lifestyle, and exceptional experiences. We go beyond the health and well being of our residents.
A Banyan Residence - Assisted Living
100 Base Avenue
East Venice, FL 34285
Office: 941-412-4748

[@meaganh637]

Wow this is brilliant.

[@oklahomalane]

Love this sensory room, especially the dolphin 360 movie. Also, I didn’t know there were dementia specific rocking chairs. Will look into that for my father.

[@kellysmith8269]

Would like more information on the projector that you used for the multi wall and ceiling experience

[@Mcgrandma]

Great idea

[@ahha351]

👍

[@lisakullack4055]

Dementia specific rocking chairs

[@drawnhere]

You're sadly mistaken if you think using a 360° movie of a roller coaster is a good idea for a dementia patient. That would absolutely agitate any one of my residents.

[@marioochoa8257]

The roller coaster may be more AL appropriate, but the ocean floor scenery is brilliant.

[@meaganh637]

You would know your residents and assess accordingly.