The heterogeneity of the aging population will increase the need to tailor care to meet individuals’ needs in nursing homes. The purpose of this paper is to present a model of individualized care based on the perspectives of nursing home residents, families, and nursing aides. A series of focus groups was conducted at two large nursing homes. Convenience samples of nursing home residents (N=14), families (N=23), and nursing aides (N=17) participated in one of 12 separate focus groups that had an average size of 5 persons and lasted on average about 1.5 hours. The questionnaire guide was organized around concepts of individualized care in the literature that included the degree of choice during care, relationship between provider and patient, participation in care, and knowing the patient. Focus group sessions were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and imported into Ethnograph, a software package for analyzing text-based data. Qualitative and descriptive frequency analyses of the results indicate components of a model of individualized care (IC) in nursing homes that is largely driven by the effectiveness of communication between nursing home staff, residents, and their families. Our data suggest that communication is an essential precursor to tailoring care to meet individuals’ needs and illustrate the meanings of IC as well as the range of strategies, conditions, interactions, and consequences experienced by these three groups in the context of two nursing homes. The implications for future research on developing communication interventions that improve the quality of nursing home care will be discussed.
Learning Objectives: 1. To recognize one approach to building a conceptual model from empirical data. 2. To evaluate the integral role of communication in individualized nursing home care. 3. To identify the overlapping and different perspectives of three groups of “key players” in nursing home care.
Keywords: Nursing Homes, Communication
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