HOSPITAble: Domestication of healthcare

The hospital is the traditional and familiar controlled environment where healthcare is defined and delivered. However the consequences of an older society the escalating costs of healthcare services and a shortage of personnel and facilities have put pressure on the healthcare system to deliver more support and treatments on an outpatient basis and in peoples home. The home and the hospital bring together very different cultural practices and environments and this inexorable geographical shift in care has potential impact on our physical and emotional relationship with our home space - our domain. These cultural practices/experiences can be mediated through objects, which in turn can provide vehicles through which to gain understanding of the richness and complexity of people's lives. The authors draw on the value of 'thinking with things' as a methodology. Central to this approach is the notion of 'exhibition' as a research tool that becomes a meeting space that enables this methodology to be applied. The 'exhibition' provides a theatre for conversation and offers the medium and method for discourse, data collection creating the conduit, through which societal assumptions relating to ageing and healthcare care can be made visible, explored and challenged.