Abstract
Growing evidence suggests that workload has an adverse effect on quality of care and patient safety in nursing homes. A novel job resource that may improve quality of care and patient safety and alleviate the negative effect of workload in nursing homes is team support for strengths use. This refers to team members’ beliefs concerning the extent to which the team they work in actively supports them in applying their individual strengths at work. The objective was to investigate the relationships between workload, team support for strengths use, quality of care, and patient safety in nursing homes. We collected (cross-sectional) survey data from 497 caregivers from 74 teams in seven different nursing homes. The survey included measures on perceived workload, team support for strengths use, caregivers’ perception of the quality of care provided by the team and four safety incidents (i.e. fall incidents, medication errors, pressure ulcers, incidents of aggression). After controlling for age, team size, team tenure, organizational tenure, and nursing home, multilevel regression analyses (i.e. individual and team level) showed that perceived workload was not significantly related to perceived team-based quality of care and the frequency of safety incidents. Team support for strengths use was positively related to perceived team-based quality of care, negatively related to medication errors, but not significantly related to fall incidents, pressure ulcers, and aggression incidents. Finally, we found that perceived workload had a negative effect on perceived team-based quality of care when team support for strengths use is low and no significant effect on perceived team-based quality of care when team support for strengths use is high. This study provides promising evidence for a novel avenue for promoting team-based quality of care in nursing homes.
Highlights
Concerns about workload in nursing homes have increased in the past few decades
The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between perceived workload, team support for strengths use, the perception of the quality of care provided by the team, and the four most frequently registered indicators of patient safety in Dutch nursing homes, namely fall incidents, medication errors, pressure ulcers, and aggression incidents [29]
Quality of care provided by the team was considered a problem by 13.3% of the respondents, whereas 13.4% of the respondents considered the team to provide care of high quality. 22.3% of respondents experienced aggression incidents frequently, whereas fall incidents, medication errors and pressure ulcers were frequently experienced by only 7.7%, 4.9%, and 0.4% of the respondents, respectively
Summary
Concerns about workload in nursing homes have increased in the past few decades. When confronted with a high workload caregivers may not have the time to assess the psychosocial and physical status of patients due to limited opportunities to interact with patients and other caregivers [11, 12]. This may hinder the proactive care that detects early signs of clinical deterioration or complications and arranges follow-up interventions, resulting in leaving at least one essential task undone [11, 12]. Quality of care and patient safety will be diminished [11,12,13,14]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
