Admission criteria for a special care unit for residents with dementia

The recent trend in caregiving for cognitively impaired residents has been to provide special care units. One of the questions in establishing a special unit is deciding on admission criteria. What range of impairment will benefit the most from this type of environment? This paper reports on how one facility developed specific assessment criteria for admission to a special unit. The goals were to identify potential residents for the unit, reduce subjectivity in the assessment process and be able to screen both residents and community applicants. Results of the screening instrument demonstrated that it was effective in identifying a range of impairments, it screened out the cognitively well and long standing psychiatric disorders, and also demonstrated that a pre-set bias did exist as to who should be admitted.