What makes residents of care centers feel at home and satisfied: a Delphi study

Abstract

A major event in the human life course is the move to a care center. In order for this transition to be successful, it is important that a care center creates the right conditions to achieve that residents feel at home and satisfied. The aim of this study is to investigate which characteristics are important for this, according to the employees of care centers in the Netherlands. First a limited list of 15 characteristics has been constructed on the basis of literature research. With the help of the Delphi method, in three rounds, employees of Dutch care institutions were then asked about the importance of these characteristics for a successful adaptation of residents to the new living environment and they were asked to provide additional comments. Based on this, characteristics have been reformulated, added or removed. The result after the third round was a high degree of agreement on the characteristics that were considered (very) important. The attribute 'respect', scored in all three rounds the highest, followed directly by the characteristics 'approach' and 'safety'. There was a high degree of agreement about the most important characteristics between the different job levels (such as employee care or supervisor).