Advancing the Big Five of user-oriented elderly care and accounting for its variations

• Purpose – Care process quality (i.e., how care is enacted by a care worker toward a client at the interpersonal level) is a strong predictor of satisfaction in a wide range of health care services. The present research aims at describing the basic elements of care process quality as user-oriented care. Specifically, the questions of how and why quality in user-oriented care varies were investigated in the context of elderly care.Design – Two municipalities were selected for in-depth field studies. First, in each municipality, we interviewed and observed care workers’ interactions with the older persons in both home care and nursing homes during two weeks (Study 1). Second, in an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of why process quality in terms of user-oriented care varies, we conducted interviews with care workers and care unit managers (Study 2).Findings – A new taxonomy for categorising process quality variation, the Big Five of user-oriented care (Task-focus, Person-focus, Affect, Cooperation, and Time-use), is proposed. In addition, the perceived reasons for process quality variation are reported in our own developed Quality Agents Model, suggesting that variations in care process evaluations may be explained from different perspectives at multiple levels (i.e., older person, care worker-, unit-, department-, and municipality-level).Value – The proposed taxonomy and model are useful for describing user-oriented care quality and the reasons for its variations. These findings are of relevance for future quality developments of elderly care services, but also may be adapted to applications in any other enterprise employing a user-oriented approach.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi -- Socialt arbete (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology -- Social Work (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

User satisfaction

user-oriented care

service quality

elderly care

individualized care

person-centred care

Socialt arbete

Social work

Humaniora-samhällsvetenskap

Woman, Child and Family (WomFam)

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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