Nursing Home Culture Change and Social Work Practice

Abstract

Priscilla Dawn Allen

The role of the social worker in the nursing home is vital in providing psychosocial services in a medical arena, yet experience, training, and education vary widely in the United States, and within the state of Louisiana. Workers are called to do more through rigorous behavioral and intentional documentation paired with advocacy recommendations to infuse higher attention to residentcentered care through federal changes in documentation and in the nursing home culture change movement. This multidimensional movement that aims to improve all aspects of life within the nursing facility, such as standards as care quality, satisfaction, and staff retention and commitment calls for a holistic method of practice. The purpose of this paper is to assess Louisiana’s nursing homes in term of implementation of culture change and to assess if there is a relationship between implementation and social work education. The relationship between implementation with the level of training and education of social workers/social service designees is explored and descriptive statistics are provided related to level of implementation in the sample. Facilities with higher implementation rates in three of the six of the culture change categories were significantly related to social work education level: Staffing, Homelike Environment, and Activities.