Nursing care in multifunctional small group homes providing day, visiting and overnight services for older people living at home

Abstract

Katahira N, Tsukasaki K. International Journal of Nursing Practice 2016; 22: 605-615 Nursing care in multifunctional small group homes providing day, visiting and overnight services for older people living at homeHome care programs for older people have been developed around the world. Nurses are key to these programs. The aim of this study is to explore details of the nursing activities used in group homes to provide a basis for describing effective nursing practices in such facilities. A self-administered questionnaire was sent to 240 randomly selected facilities throughout Japan in 2013. Responses indicated that the activities of nurses in managing the health of older people included determining the need for medical consultations, dealing with emergencies, and making arrangements for the use of flexible care services. Nursing activities were directly related to the percentage of older people in each facility with diagnoses such as dementia or heart disease. Nurses reported low general self-efficacy for some of the more specialized nursing activities they performed. Nursing activities are performed with the aim of supporting older people with high health care needs to continue living at home; are tailored to the characteristics of residents and contribute to the provision of timely health examinations and flexible arrangement of services. Findings indicate that it might be advantageous to increase the nursing staffing at these facilities, to provide care guidelines and training opportunities to increase nurse self-efficacy.

The Structure of Family Practices in Multifunctional Long-Term Care in a Small Group Home in Japan

“…End-of-life care is also discussed in 17 practice reports of nurses involved in shokibo in Japan 18 which state that users need to be watched over until end-of-life care. A higher proportion of people die at medical institutions in Japan than they do in other countries.…”

“…Research in eight European countries has also found that interruptions to daytime schedules are strongly associated with the family carer’s burden of nursing care. 17 This is the practice of making arrangements for flexible care service, and, as pointed out by Katahira and Tsukasaki, 18 making arrangements to become a part of a user’s and the user’s family’s lives at home is a major feature of this practice.…”

Implementation of an Advance Care Planning Inventory and Its Possible Effect on Quality of Dying: A Nationwide Cross-Sectional Study in Group Homes for Persons with Dementia in Japan

“…There are several limitations to this study. First, the response rate was low, as with previous studies [ 35 ], and the responses may have come from facilities that are positively involved in end-of-life care. Second, we asked the care planners to respond to the quality of end-of-life care by recalling a patient who had died in the facility, which is not the same as the quality of end-of-life care as judged by the PWD or their family.…”

Investigating the demands for mobile internet-based home nursing services for the elderly

“…Continuing medical education for nurses providing home nursing services to elderly patients is of great importance. In the study of Katahira and Tsukasaki, 12 it was found that nurses are key to home nursing services and that it might be advantageous to increase nursing staffing and provide care guidelines and training opportunities to improve nurses’ self-efficacy. In our study, the nurses providing home nursing services to elderly patients were all from large public general hospitals and so the number of nurses was sufficient.…”