Research Article Improving Quality of Life in Nursing Homes: The Structured Resident Interview Approach

License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The quality of life (QOL) of the approximately 1.5million nursing facility (NF) residents in theUS is undoubtedly lower than desired by residents, families, providers, and policy makers. Although there have been important advances in defining andmeasuring QOL for this population, there is a need for interventions that are tied to standardizedmeasurement and quality improvement programs. This paper describes the development and testing of a structured, tailored assessment and care planning process for improving the QOL of nursing home residents.TheQuality of Life Structured Resident Interview and Care Plan (QOL.SRI/CP) builds on a decade of research on measuring QOL and is designed to be easily implemented in any US nursing home. The approach was developed through extensive and iterative pilot testing and then tested in a randomized controlled trial in three nursing homes. Residents were randomly assigned to receive the assessment alone or both the assessment and an individualized QOL care plan task. The results show that residents assigned to the intervention group experienced improved QOL at 90- and 180-day follow-up, while QOL of residents in the control group was unchanged. 1. Background This paper describes a novel assessment and care planning system for improving quality of life (QOL) in nursing homes