Quality of Life Versus Quality of Care: Elderly People and Their Experience of Care in South Australian Residential Facilities

Abstract

Residential aged care facilities provide care to elderly people but do they provide quality of life? Current issues such as the growth of the elderly population, increasing longevity and resulting complex health problems, financial demands, and policy inadequacies highlight the need for investigation into the aged care sector. In particular, residential care is seen as requiring analysis, due to the highly vulnerable nature of recipients. While nursing homes often profess to provide ‘holistic’ or ‘person-centred’ care to their residents, the evidence suggests that institutional goals will take precedence. Thus the research question for this study is ‘Does residential care in South Australia enable recipients to live to their full potential?’ The research method for this project will utilise in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a sample of 10 residents from two residential facilities. Findings reveal that while participants of the study are reasonably satisfied with the quality of care they receive, they are not able to live to their full potential. This has implications in many industrial and post industrial nations with ageing populations, for care home management and social work practice with older people living in residential care settings.