Researchers led by Helena Temkin-Greener, of the University of Rochester Medical Center set out to discover whether teamwork among staff members at nursing homes improved the quality of care and reduced the incidence of such problems as bedsores and incontinence. Their hypothesis proved to be correct. They found that residents in facilities with poor staff cohesion had significantly greater odds of pressure ulcers and incontinence.
"Nursing homeenvironments and management practices influence residents' health outcomes,"the authors wrote in a report in the journal Health Services Research. "These findings provide important lessons for administrators and regulators interested in promoting nursing home quality improvement."
And the lesson for all of us, obviously, is that we are ever are faced with looking for residential nursing facilities for loved ones, we would do well to spend time observing how the staff at each prospective institution interacts and then selecting a home with a cohesive group of workers who will be the most likely to provide an optimal level of care.
Researchers from Brown University, Texas A&M University, the University of Southern California, and RTI International, contributed to the study that was funded with a grant from the National Institute on Aging.
