Quality-of-life Assessment
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THE "GOLD STANDARD"
Based on these findings, there is growing consensus that residents' self-reports represent the "gold standard" for measuring their quality of life-an inherently subjective construct that includes such domains as relationships, autonomy, privacy, and enjoyment-and are integral to quality of care assessments. After all, residents are the direct recipients of long term care-not their respective family members or health care providers.
In addition, there's a side benefit to interviewing residents. Writes Kane et al. (3), "The very act of asking resident directly about their (quality of life) could engage staff directly and systematically with residents' opinions about their daily existence in a way that seldom occurs in a typical (nursing facility). Such a process militates against the tendency to depersonalize residents, and to view them merely as care recipients rather than people who live out their lives in difficult circumstances (pg. 247)."
The implications for nursing home care providers are inescapable: If you want to evaluate consumer satisfaction, quality of life, quality of care, call it what you will, then you must capture the voices of residents, including cognitively impaired residents, in your assessment. Surveying family members is an acceptable practice; they are important stakeholders in long-term care. But don't canvass them at the cost of excluding their loved ones. Our Interview Protocol presents guidelines for selecting residents for assessment interviews.
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