Quality of Life in Care Homes
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Development and evaluation of a methodology for the routine measurement of quality of life in care homes.
IRAS ID
171671
Contact name
Laura Hughes
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Brighton and Sussex Medical School
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 2 months, 1 days
Research summary
Dementia is an umbrella term for a set of conditions which cause the decline of intellectual, social and everyday functioning. There are approximately 850,000 people with dementia living in the UK with an expected increase to over 1 million people by 2025. As dementia progresses it may be necessary for people to move into a care home for extra care and support. One third of people with dementia live in care or nursing home facilities, around 283,000 people. This, coupled with increasing numbers of people with dementia will mean more people living in care homes in coming years. The quality of life (QoL) of people living with dementia and the QoL of those living in care homes (CHs) has been of interest to researchers for many years. This led to the development of numerous measures of QoL. QoL measures are commonly questionnaire based assessments that are completed by the person with dementia and/or a proxy such as a family member or carer. Assessments of QoL are not routinely carried out within CHs. Most assessments in CHs are carried out during research projects by trained researchers which ultimately are of little or no practical use to the CH and staff. Other methods available for CHs to use are instruments such as non-participant observational assessments where staff are trained to assess the QoL of residents. Unfortunately the training for these methods can be expensive and completing them is time consuming, taking several hours. The aim of this study is to develop and evaluate a method whereby it is possible to incorporate into routine practice the systematic and repeated measurement of QoL in CHs. The project will determine the feasibility, validity and impact of gathering data from care staff using the DEMQOL-Proxy system, a well validated measure of health related QoL in dementia.
REC name
Social Care REC
REC reference
15/IEC08/0042
Date of REC Opinion
6 Aug 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion