The Nursing Home Survey on Patient Safety Culture was released recently, detailing what people who work at 226 nursing homes in the United States have to say about the facilities where they work. According to the New York Times, the survey details 12 areas of measurement for the nation’s nursing homes.
The survey was distributed by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and given to healthcare workers around the U.S. Some of what they said seemed to be common knowledge, such as the fact that nursing homes are understaffed. According to Joan Sorra, senior study director for the survey, only 41 percent of respondents agreed that the facility had enough staff to handle residents’ needs safely. Almost two-thirds agreed that staff had to hurry because there was too much work to do.
“The big problem seems to be workload,” Sorra said.
Also, the survey shows that the size of the facility matters. In nursing homes with 49 or fewer beds, 77 percent of staff members rated their facility high in overall safety. By contrast, only 59 percent of workers at facilities with more than 100 beds gave their nursing home top safety ratings.
The New York Times noted that the survey was not as large or representative a sample of U.S. nursing homes as it could be. Facilities distributed and filled out the survey on a volunteer basis, so nonprofit and government nursing homes are overrepresented.
