The influence of nursing home residency on the capacities of low-dependency older adults

Abstract

Objective: With the growing number of low-dependency older adults in long-stay care and the lack of categorisation of these institutions in the Republic of Ireland, it can be asked if such facilities are truly beneficial. This paper presents an explorative investigation of the influence of the nursing home environment on the capacities of low-dependency older adults.

Method: The participants consisted of 50 community residents, as a control group, and 50 nursing home residents ranging in age from 65 to 95 years. The methodology was based on a triangulation of three data sources: a battery of cognitive, sensory, sensorimotor and psychological well-being assessments; a semi-structured participant interview; and an institutional questionnaire. Cluster analysis was then used to identify natural performance groupings within the assessment battery data.

Results: There were two performance groupings within the dataset. Interestingly, two community residents were grouped with the majority of nursing home residents and six nursing home residents were grouped with the majority of community residents. The interpretation of the results was informed by the semi-structured interviews and the institutional questionnaires.

Conclusion: Although causality cannot be attributed, findings indicate an association between the nursing home environment and the capacities of older adult residents.

Keywords:

• nursing home environment
• older adult capacities
• autonomy
• peer networks

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the participants of this study for their contribution to the research. They would also like to thank Dr Colm Hackett, the staff and administration of the participating nursing homes, Sister Geraldine Brown and Ethna and Larry Carey for their kind assistance. Finally the authors would like to express their appreciation to Dr Jean Saunders from the Statistical Consulting Unit in the University of Limerick for her guidance.

Notes

Note

1. The between-groups linkage method, or unweighted pair-group average, calculates the distance between two clusters as the average distance (similarity) between all pairs of objects in the different clusters (Garson, 2007).