Insights for optimal quality of care and adequate workforce in nursing homes

While the demand for high quality of care in nursing homes is rising, recruiting and retaining qualified care workers is becoming increasingly difficult. To date, the evidence regarding key organizational variables such as staffing, work environment and rationing of care, and their relationship with quality of care and care workers’ intention to leave is still scarce. Therefore, this PhD project aims to comprehensively examine these relationships in order to generate the necessary scientific knowledge base that is currently lacking to inform future quality improvement projects and effective strategies for recruiting and retaining qualified staff in nursing homes. Two studies are planned to address this aim. The first study will be a multicenter prospective longitudinal study in a large sample of Flemish nursing homes, linking data from nursing home and care worker surveys to registry data on resident outcomes. Survey and registry data will be collected at baseline and again after two years in all participating nursing homes. This will allow us to examine the interrelationships of key organizational variables and resident outcomes and to identify predictors of poor quality of care. The second study will be a cross-sectional mixed-methods study, using quantitative data from care worker surveys and qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with care workers to explore in-depth which factors influence intention to leave among nursing home care workers.