Public Bathroom Design Guidelines for Elderly Women in Nursing Homes Based on Anthropometric Approach

Aging population is currently rising in the world, where the elderly population exceeds 7 percent of the total population. Elderly population, those who have reached the age of 60 or above, are continually increasing from year to year, which occurs globally, including in Indonesia. In general, elderly experience changes in their physical conditions, one of them is instability or falls. There are several studies stated that falls are one of the main causes of death due to accidents among the elderly and most likely happens in home environment, especially bathrooms. Previous studies conducted in several countries that studied about elderly friendly bathroom are found. However, research related to bathroom design for elderly in Indonesia is still considerably limited. This research aims to produce public bathroom design guidelines for elderly women based on anthropometric considerations. Posture analysis using RULA, LBA, and OWAS are performed to evaluate the design guidelines. The posture evaluation results show that all postures when conducting several activities in the bathroom are acceptable, thus it can be concluded that the public bathroom design guidelines are suitable to be used by Indonesian elderly women. The results of this research are expected to be a guide for designing elderly-friendly public bathroom, especially for older women, that can be implemented in nursing homes in Indonesia.