Quality dining in the nursing home
Posted by Patti on January 25th, 2005 / Print This Post
Quality food and food service are integral to quality of life for older adults in nursing homes. There is little known about residents’ perspectives on this issue. It is known that when the relationship between appetizing food, quality food service, and quality of life in nursing homes is investigated, residents indicate that they often dislike the food served to them and find it unappetizing because of appearance, lack of variety, or failure to address their personal preferences. The present study examined residents’ perspective about quality dining in nursing homes and described the implications for practice.
A phenomenological approach was used to discover meaning in a series of ‘tell me a story’ resident interviews. Tape-recorded interviews were completed with 20 nursing home residents who told stories about their food and food service and described a perfect mealtime. The pattern, “Fostering a Quality Dining Experience” contained five themes derived from residents perspectives; Choosing Food, Getting Good People, Getting Good Service, Choosing Surroundings, and Getting Enough to Eat. The quality of nursing home food and food service was examined using a multidimensional theoretical model integrating consumer and provider perspectives.
The importance of staff emerged strongly in this study in all five themes. Even the theme, Choosing Surroundings, required the assistance of staff for serving residents’ trays in their own rooms or gathering them together in the dining room. Dietary staff and nursing assistants were the catalysts for a pleasurable atmosphere as they served and chatted with residents, ensuring that food preferences were honored. Intertwined with the dimension of staff is the dimension of care. Residents also wanted a pleasant milieu with music and companionship at meals. They also wanted food to be served at the right temperature and on time. Communication was also an important dimension in all five themes, including issues of choice, interaction, problem correction, eating location, and availability of adequate food all rested on resident-family-staff communication.
Staff must be quick to offer residents help with preparation of the food already on residents’ trays, opening milk and yogurt cartons, buttering bread, or removing a baked potato from foil so that residents can eat while food is hot. Consistent care is vital, and residents’ likes and dislikes should be elicited, prominently displayed for staff, and honored, meal after meal.
B Evans, N Crogan, J Armstrong Shultz. Quality dining in the nursing home: the residents’ perspective. J Nutr Elder 22(3):1-16 (June 2003) [Correspondence: Bronwynne C. Evans, Washington State University College of Nursing, 2917 Ft. George Wright Drive, Spokane, WA 99224. E-mail: evansb@wsu.edu]
COPYRIGHT 2003 Frost & Sullivan
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
February 26th, 2005 at 5:10 pm
Yeah I agree with this article and suspect things should be done to give elderly proper foods and dining atomphere in nursing homes. As the surroundings can make or break a person.