Paper short abstract:

Hospitalised people with dementia who wear special hospital wristbands are vulnerable to having their condition revealied to those who can interpret the identifier. The goal of this paper is to explore the stigmatising potential of a special hospital wristband for patients with dementia.

Paper long abstract:

A significant proportion of elderly patients admitted to hospitals also have dementia and may display dementia-related behaviours, which makes their care more challenging to clinical staff. Many hospitals have systems of visual identification for such patients in the form of e.g. stickers placed above their beds. These visual identifiers, while often useful, do not always help to prevent problems arising when patients with dementia walk about the hospital and become lost. One of the design interventions proposed to address this particular issue was using visual identifiers that can be placed on the patient, such as blue hospital wristbands. Similar interventions were successfully rolled out in a number of NHS trusts in England but a range of ethical concerns have been raised around their use, from issues with informed consent to disclosure of diagnosis. A number of voices suggested that wristbands of this kind have the potential to stigmatise patients with dementia by revealing their condition to those who can interpret the identifier. The goal of this paper is to explore the stigmatising potential of a special hospital wristband for patients with dementia in two contexts. The first includes a comparison with other visual identifier systems used in hospital settings that do not raise such criticisms. The second involves broader understandings of living with dementia that deemphasise medicalisation of processes typical of aging. By exploring the stigmatising potential of a special hospital wristband, it is possible to reveal frictions at the intersection of various agendas that simultaneously normalise and denormalise dementia.