Quality of life of elderly nursing home residents and its correlates in Kayseri. A descriptive-analytical design: A cross-sectional study

Purpose: To define the level of quality of life in an elderly population and to investigate the effects of selected variables, such as anemia, fatigue, depression and sleep disorders, on the quality of life. Design and Methods: The study was conducted in Gazioğlu Nursing Home, located in the city center of Kayseri, on 136 subjects ≥65 in the year 2008-2009. Data were collected using the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and the World Health Organization Quality of Life-OLD (WHOQOLOLD) Module. In the statistical analysis mean ± standard deviation, student’s t-test, ANOVA and Spearman correlation analysis were used. Results: The mean total score of quality of life was 43.45 ± 10.30. Of the residents 47.0% had a poor quality of life. Autonomy had the lowest (35.70 ± 19.96) and intimacy had the highest (48.75 ± 17.96) subdomain scores. Fatigue significantly decreased the total and autonomy, social participation and death and dying subdomain scores. Anemia had a significant adverse effect on intimacy, depression on autonomy and intimacy and sleep disorder on death and dying. There were negative correlations between fatigue with past-present-future activities and social participation, depression with social participation, intimacy, death and dying and glucose levels with social participation and intimacy. Implications: About half of the subjects had a poor quality of life. Fatigue was the sole factor to negatively affect the total score in WHOQOL-OLD. Depression, anemia and sleep disorder adversely affected the autonomy, social participation, intimacy, death and dying subdomain scores but not in all.