clinical focus
Simple measures
New tool to evaluate quality of life in aged care homes from a consumer perspective.
Suzanne Dyer interviewed by Dallas Bastian
A new tool that measures the quality of aged care has been submitted to a Senate inquiry.
Flinders University’ s Consumer Choice Index – 6 Dimension( CCI-6D) questionnaire was presented recently to the Senate Inquiry into the Effectiveness of the Aged Care Quality Assessment and Accreditation Framework.
The index, funded by the NHMRC Cognitive Decline Partnership Centre, has been designed to evaluate the quality of care in aged care homes from a consumer perspective.
The team behind the questionnaire said it could be an effective response to the Review of National Aged Care Quality Regulatory Processes released last month, which called for better systems of information sharing on provider performance and consumer directed care in the aged care sector.
Researcher Dr Suzanne Dyer, from the university’ s Rehabilitation, Aged and Extended Care discipline, College of Nursing and Health Sciences, said the team’ s research indicates that several things are important to residents and their family members: the way staff provide care, respect for the individual as a person, the physical and social environment, and the level of autonomy given to individuals.
The CCI-6D questionnaire measures six key characteristics of good quality care. They cover the extent to which: 1. formal caregivers are able to spend enough time attending to an individual’ s needs 2. the shared spaces of the facility are home-like and non-institutional
3. the individual rooms of the facility are homelike and non-institutional 4. there is choice in access to outside areas and gardens 5. there is access to meaningful activities individualised for the person 6. there is flexibility in the time that care activities are undertaken. Aged Care Insite spoke with Dyer about the ways in which the team envisions the index will be used by providers and externally, and how it differs from other tools.
ACI: What are consumers prompted to think about as they work through the index? SD: Basically, as a little introduction, this is a really simple tool that we’ ve developed over a long time through consultation with consumers – the residents and family members of people living with, in particular, dementia and cognitive impairment in residential aged care facilities.
The components of this instrument have come from consumers themselves, and what they feel are important in the quality of care. The items they would be asked to think about are fairly simple but capture a large range of important aspects to consumers, and they’ re asked to rate how much time the caregiving staff are able to spend with them – so, whether it’ s enough to meet their individual needs – and also, how homelike the aged care facility is, which we know is certainly a move in the provision of aged care towards providing a more homelike, rather than institutional, facility.
We’ re also asking about how much access they have to outside and garden spaces. We’ ve done some research and we know that getting outdoors frequently is associated with a better quality of life for residents. So this is really important, but also residents and family members have indicated to us that this is a really important activity and requirement of a quality aged care home.
And finally, whether the care routines are flexible in terms of meal times, shower times and so on. Is there consideration of what suits the residents? Does the facility offer activities that are
26 agedcareinsite. com. au