Identifying resident care areas for a quality improvement intervention in long-term care: a collaborative approach.

BACKGROUND: In Canada, healthcare aides (also referred to as nurse aides, personal support workers, nursing assistants) are unregulated personnel who provide 70-80% of direct care to residents living in nursing homes. Although they are an integral part of the care team their contributions to the resident care planning process are not always acknowledged in the organization. The purpose of the Safer Care for Older Persons [in residential] Environments (SCOPE) project was to evaluate the feasibility of engaging front line staff (primarily healthcare aides) to use quality improvement methods to integrate best practices into resident care. This paper describes the process used by teams participating in the SCOPE project to select clinical improvement areas. METHODS: The study employed a collaborative approach to identify clinical areas and through consensus, teams selected one of three areas. To select the clinical areas we recruited two nursing homes not involved in the SCOPE project and sampled healthcare providers and decision-makers within them. A vote counting method was used to determine the top five ranked clinical areas for improvement. RESULTS: Responses received from stakeholder groups included gerontology experts, decision-makers, registered nurses, managers, and healthcare aides. The top ranked areas from highest to lowest were pain/discomfort management, behaviour management, depression, skin integrity, and assistance with eating. CONCLUSIONS: Involving staff in selecting areas that they perceive as needing improvement may facilitate staff engagement in the quality improvement process.

Feedback reporting of survey data to healthcare aides.

BACKGROUND: This project occurred during the course of the Translating Research in Elder Care (TREC) program of research. TREC is a multilevel and longitudinal research program being conducted in the three Canadian Prairie Provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. The main purpose of TREC is to increase understanding about the role of organizational context in influencing knowledge use in residential long-term care settings. The purpose of this study was to evaluate healthcare aides' (HCAs) perceptions of a one-page poster designed to feed back aggregated data (including demographic information and perceptions about influences on best practice) from the TREC survey they had recently completed. METHODS: A convenience sample of 7 of the 15 nursing homes participating in the TREC research program in Alberta were invited to participate. Specific facility-level summary data were provided to each facility in the form of a one-page poster report. Two weeks following delivery of the report, a convenience sample of HCAs was surveyed using one-to-one structured interviews. RESULTS: One hundred twenty-three HCAs responded to the evaluation survey. Overall, HCAs' opinions about presentation of the feedback report and the understandability, usability, and usefulness of the content were positive. For each report, analysis of data and production and inspection of the report took up to one hour. Information sessions to introduce and explain the reports averaged 18 minutes. Two feedback reports (minimum) were supplied to each facility at a cost of CAN$2.39 per report, for printing and laminating. CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights not only the feasibility of producing understandable, usable, and useful feedback reports of survey data but also the value and importance of providing feedback to survey respondents. More broadly, the findings suggest that modest strategies may have a positive and desirable effect in participating sites.