Relinking the Separated, Dividing the Connected. Qualitative Field Survey on Dementia Care in Nursing Homes, in France
This article focuses on dementia in nursing home (especially in what is called in France EHPAD). It analyzes how dementia care has been designed and the staff and managers’ actual experiences. Is shows that space has taken a special place in dementia care in nursing homes, especially through the development of special care units. Thanks to an ethnographic field survey in a limited corpus of nursing homes, a more complex reality is discovered. In a context of constant debates, it appears that specific care in a special unit is widely accepted as a standard, according to the “sector-wide” and “target population” approach. Moreover, in the daily practices, fostered by a global approach which attempting to facilitate the cohabitation of the whole community of residents, care is built as subtle balances between the different forms of specialization. It is a “field common thought” process based on the following tension: relink what was separated, divide what is connected.