The value of resident choice during daily care: do staff and families differ?

Allowing long-term care (LTC) residents to make choices about their daily life activities is a central tenet of resident-centered care. This study examined whether staff and family rated care episodes involving choice differently from care episodes not involving choice. Seventeen nurse aide and 15 family participants were shown paired video vignettes of care interactions. Participants were asked to rate their preferred care vignette using a standardized forced-choice questionnaire. Focus groups were held separately for staff and family members following this rating task to determine reasons for their preferences. Both staff and family rated the vignettes depicting choice as "strongly" preferred to the vignettes without choice. Reasons provided for the preference ratings during the focus group discussions related to resident well-being, sense of control, and respondents' own personal values. These findings have implications for LTC staff training related to resident-centered care to promote choice.

A controlled trial of an intervention to increase resident choice in long term care.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate an intervention to improve staff offers of choice to nursing home residents during morning care. DESIGN: A controlled trial with a delayed intervention design. SETTING: Four community, for-profit nursing homes. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 169 long-stay nursing home residents who required staff assistance with morning care and were able to express their care preferences. INTERVENTION: Research staff held weekly training sessions with nurse aides (NAs) for 12 consecutive weeks focused on how to offer choice during four targeted morning care areas: when to get out of bed, when to get dressed/what to wear, incontinence care (changing and/or toileting), and where to dine. Training sessions consisted of brief video vignettes illustrating staff-resident interactions followed by weekly feedback about how often choice was being provided based on standardized observations of care conducted weekly by research staff. MEASUREMENTS: Research staff conducted standardized observations during a minimum of 4 consecutive morning hours per participant per week for 12 weeks of baseline and 12 weeks of intervention. RESULTS: There was a significant increase in the frequency that choice was offered for 3 of the 4 targeted morning care areas from baseline to intervention: (1) out of bed, 21% to 33% (P < .001); dressing, 20% to 32% (P < .001); incontinence care, 18% to 23%, (P < .014). Dining location (8% to 13%) was not significant. There was also a significant increase in the amount of NA staff time to provide care from baseline to intervention (8.01 ± 9.0 to 9.68 ± 9.9 minutes per person, P < .001). CONCLUSION: A staff training intervention improved the frequency with which NAs offered choice during morning care but also required more time. Despite significant improvements, choice was still offered one-third or less of the time during morning care.

Resident-directed long-term care: staff provision of choice during morning care.

PURPOSE: To develop an observational protocol to assess the quality of staff-resident communication relevant to choice and describe staff-resident interactions as preliminary evidence of the usefulness of the tool to assess current nursing home practices related to offering choice during morning care provision. DESIGN AND METHODS: This study included 73 long-stay residents in 2 facilities. Research staff conducted observations for 4 consecutive morning hours during targeted care activities (transfer out of bed, incontinence, dressing, and dining location). Observations were conducted weekly for 12 consecutive weeks. Staff-resident interactions were measured related to staff offers of choice and residents' responses. RESULTS: Interrater agreement was achieved for measures of staff offers of choice (kappa = .83, p < .001), type of choice provided (kappa = .75, p < .001), and resident requests related to choice (kappa = .72, p < .001). Observations over 2,766 care episodes during 4 aspects of morning care showed that staff offered residents choice during 18% of the episodes. Most observations (70%) were coded as staff offering "no choice." IMPLICATIONS: Nursing home staff can use a simplified version of this standardized observational tool to reliably measure staff-resident interactions related to choice during morning care provision as a first step toward improving resident-directed care practice.