Concerns about the quality of nursing home care continue to mount even with increased regulations and efforts to improve the quality of care for older persons. Insufficient research is available to clearly guide recommendations for nursing staff numbers and skill mix that are associated with quality outcomes. Yet, the relationship of numbers and types of nursing staffing to some outcomes that are highly important to residents' well-being, such as weight loss and dehydration, have been minimally studied. A cross-sectional correlational secondary analysis of the Long Term Care Minimum Data Set (MDS) and Online Survey and Certification and Reporting (OSCAR) will be used to determine the unique and total proportion of variance in weight loss and dehydration explained by the number of nursing home staff hours per resident day, skill mix, resident risk factors, external and internal nursing home characteristics. A representative sample of 300 nursing homes will be selected from Health Care Financing Administration Region V (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota). Hierarchical Linear Modeling will be used to investigate the research questions. The focus of the analysis is on the nursing homes, but the impact of resident characteristics on the outcomes of interest will be taken into account as well.
| Dyck, Mary J (2007) Nursing staffing and resident outcomes in nursing homes: weight loss and dehydration. J Nurs Care Qual 22:59-65 |
| Dyck, Mary J; Culp, Kennith; Cacchione, Pamela Z (2007) Data quality strategies in cohort studies: lessons from a study on delirium in nursing home elders. Appl Nurs Res 20:39-43 |
