Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Mar 3, 2025
Date Accepted: Oct 13, 2025
Creating compassionate spaces for end-of-life care: Protocol for an environmental assessment of hospice settings for older people experiencing homelessness
ABSTRACT
Background:
With current data supporting an increasing population of OPEH requiring end-of-life (EOL) care, understanding the environmental factors that influence their wellbeing is crucial.
Objective:
This protocol paper provides a comprehensive overview for evaluating hospice environments tailored to the needs of older people experiencing homelessness (OPEH).
Methods:
The Aging in the Right Place (AIRP) study aims to address this gap by developing and implementing the Aging in the Right Place – Hospice Environmental Assessment Protocol (AIRP-HEAP) and AIRP-HEAP Secondary Observation (SO) tools. The AIRP-HEAP tool evaluates the built and natural environment within hospice settings. Adaptations were made to ensure alignment with the unique needs of OPEH, such as reconceptualizing spiritual care and expanding the definition of family accommodation. Additionally, the AIRP-HEAP SO tool supplements this by capturing contextual data on the surrounding neighbourhood of the hospice site, providing a holistic understanding.
Results:
The anticipated results will highlight the importance of considering environmental factors in hospice environments and inform recommendations to improve EOL care for OPEH.
Conclusions:
Data collected using these audit tools can guide environmental modifications in hospice settings to facilitate aging and EOL care in the right place. Thus, this protocol paper aims to promote the adoption of best practices in hospice design to better support this vulnerable population.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.