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Lauriane Favez successfully defended her dissertation on 28th April 2022
Lauriane Favez’s dissertation aims to support higher quality of care for nursing home residents by investigating quality indicators and quality improvement processes used in Swiss nursing homes through multiple studies.
As a growing number of persons live longer, the proportion of those reaching very old age and requiring 24h professional medical and social care in the last years of their life is rising. This puts increased pressure on nursing homes, which already face considerable challenges. Lauriane Favez’s dissertation is a multi-study research project that focuses on addressing gaps in the literature regarding the measurement and improvement of quality of care in nursing homes. The overall aim of this thesis is to provide evidence to contribute to answer the question: “How can quality of care be measured, maintained and developed in nursing homes?”.
A systematic review of quality indicators currently used in nursing homes, a quantitative study evaluating newly introduced Swiss national nursing home quality indicators, two further quantitative studies evaluating factors associated with higher quality of care and quality improvement activities done in nursing homes, and a qualitative study exploring how managers from top-performing nursing homes define and improve quality of care form this thesis. Three of these studies are based on data from the Swiss national, cross-sectional, multi-center study SHURP (Swiss Nursing Homes Human Resources Project). The dissertation discusses findings relating to the use of appropriate quality indicators, recommendations for a simpler measurement and reporting system, and the need for increased data competencies in nursing homes.
References:
- Favez L, Zúñiga F, Sharma N, Blatter C, Simon M. (2020). Assessing nursing homes quality indicators’ between-provider variability and reliability: a cross-sectional study using ICCs and rankability. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health (17):9249. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17249249
- Asante BL, Zúñiga F, Favez L. (2021). Quality of care is what we make of it: a qualitative study of managers’ perspectives on quality of care in high-performing nursing homes. BMC Health Serv Res (21):1090. doi: 10.1186/s12913-021-07113-9
- Favez L, Simon M, Bleijlevens M, Serdaly C, Zúñiga F. (2022). Association of surveillance technology and staff opinions with physical restraint use in nursing homes: cross-sectional study. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. (Accepted for publication 12.03.2022).