Priorities for long-term care: Comments from board-and-care residents

Abstract

In these times of shrinking human services resources, establishing clear service priorities becomes all the more necessary. This is particularly true for the care of chronically mentally ill persons, whose many needs place high service demands on the care system. As a group these patients rarely have a say in the establishment of service priorities. To obtain a better idea of their perceived needs, we asked 278 randomly selected, mentally disabled residents in 30 Los Angeles board-and-care homes about their current life conditions and problems. Their responses to open-ended questions about recent sources of unhappiness and desired changes were compared with quantitative measures of life satisfaction in several life areas. Unemployment, poverty, and housing were the areas in which patients most consistently expressed dissatisfaction and desire for change. Also, mental health problems, including interpersonal and family difficulties, caused frequent day-to-day unhappiness for them. These findings underscore the need for social service programs that adequately address patients' problems of living, in addition to continuing efforts to meet their mental health needs.

What Do Family Members Notice Following an Intervention to Improve Mobility and Incontinence Care for Nursing Home Residents? An Analysis of Open-Ended Comments

“…It remains to be seen if the same phenomenon occurs when part of a naturally occurring quality-improvement effort. Studies conducted in other health care settings and populations have shown that open-ended questions yield information that is different from and more specific than that produced by closed-ended questions in terms of desired improvements in care quality (Billings & Kolton, 1999;Chesney, Lindeke, Johnson, Jukkala, & Lynch, 2005;Lehman, Reed, & Possidente, 1982). Unlike these previous studies, the results from the current study indicate a reliable method for coding open-ended responses that quantifies the scope of open-ended comments into two types of improvement (staff care processes and resident outcomes).…”

Les appartements protégés : le point de vue des locataires

“…On pose ensuite des questions ouvertes quant aux occasions récentes de plaisir et de contrariété, aux préoccu-pations actuelles et aux aspirations. Ces questions sont aussi reprises de deux enquêtes américaines récentes (Lehman et al, 1982;Spivack étf 0/., 1982) auprès de patients psychiatriques chroniques dans la communauté. Ces enquêtes fournissent ainsi des points de repères pour la lecture des données qué-bécoises.…”

Quality of Life in Depression: Predictive Models

“…Gregory [36] found a significant relationship between satisfaction and meaning of activities, as defined by the concept of personal causation, value, and interests mentioned in the Model of Human Occupation (Kielhofner, 2002). Lehman [37] identified four factors related to global well-being: satisfaction with health, leisure, social relationships, and financial situation.…”