Healthcare Professionals’ Perceptions of Function-Focused Care Education for Nursing Home Practitioners

Abstract

A nursing home (NH) care environment necessitates a shared cognition-based education model that maintains effective function-focused care (FFC). This study’s aim was to explore healthcare professionals’ perceptions of function-focused care education for the development of an education model using a shared mental model (SMM) in NHs. Semi-structured interviews with 30 interdisciplinary practitioners from four different professions (nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and social workers) and focus group interviews with 12 experts were conducted. Data were analyzed using content analysis, and the education model development was guided by the shared mental models for data interpretation and formation. Our FFC interdisciplinary educational model incorporates four key learning components: learning contents, educational activities, educational goals/outcome, and environment, and four types of SMMs: team, task, team interaction, and equipment. As for educational contents, a team’s competencies with FFC were found to be team knowledge (physical and psychosocial functional care), team skills to perform FFC successfully (motivation, coaching and supporting, managing discomfort), and team attitude (possessing philosophy perceptions regarding FFC). As for learning outcomes, the shared cognition-based education model suggests not only the evaluation of practitioners, but also the assessment of residents’ aspects.

Capturing key function‐focused care problems, nursing diagnoses, and interventions for nursing home patients using a web‐based case management system

“…Implementing FFC in an NH setting requires the abilities of interdisciplinary caregivers and an organized approach within the NH context to initiate and support the FFC process (Lee et al., 2019). FFC guidelines emphasize that interdisciplinary teams should cooperate in the assessment of risk factors (e.g., pain, cognitive status), physical and social functions, and interventions (Lee et al., 2021). The sharing of interdisciplinary caregiver data, especially on patients’ functional changes in their activities of daily living (ADLs), can inform caregivers when redesigning FFC priorities and services.…”

“…However, all these studies investigated evaluation data for the elderly from a nursing perspective, and it is difficult to find studies on the overall function evaluation data of interdisciplinary caregivers. In Korea, many studies have been conducted on the perceptions (Lee et al., 2021), experiences (Chang et al., 2020; Kim et al., 2016; Park et al., 2019), and education (Lee et al., 2020) of interdisciplinary caregivers in regard to FFC in NH residents to improve the quality of care in NHs. However, no case studies investigating the case management contents of assessment, diagnoses, and interventions according to the functional status of the elderly have been conducted.…”