PURPOSE Attitudes of nursing home staff, residents, and their relatives determine the decision-making process about the use of physical restraints. Knowledge of staffs' attitudes toward physical restraints is sparse; even less is known about relatives' attitudes. Therefore, we surveyed relatives' attitudes and opinions toward physical restraints and compared the results to a survey of nursing h...

BACKGROUND Drug-resistant Acinetobacter species are problematic in tertiary-care hospitals. We describe the epidemiology, resistance patterns, and outcomes of older adults with Acinetobacter infection in community hospitals. METHODS We queried the microbiology databases of the Oakwood Healthcare System (4 hospitals with 632, 259, 199, and 168 beds) for clinical Acinetobacter cultures obtained...

OBJECTIVES To describe the impact of regular visits to a nursing home by a gerontologist physician assistant (PA) on the hospitalization and medical costs of patients. DESIGN A 6-year case series (1992-1997) incorporating events before and after introduction of a PA in May 1994. The PA visited the nursing home 3 to 4 times per week, provided nearly all of the acute medical care, and alternate...

OBJECTIVES The objective of this study was to explore how nursing home staff members manage the transition from routine care to end-of-life care when a resident is dying. DESIGN The exploratory descriptive study used qualitative methods. SETTING A 122-bed nursing home on a continuum of long-term care campus. PARTICIPANTS Participants were 35 nursing home professionals (21 nurses, 9 CNAs, ...

In this paper, we propose a completely unconstrained method for automatic monitoring of sleep behaviour and health status in nursing home residents using an Internetbased automatic sleep monitoring system mainly composed of a pressure sensor and a data server. When a nursing home resident lies in bed, his/her pressure variations due to heart pulsation, respiration, and body movement are sensed ...

Since 1998, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has maintained a website, Nursing Home Compare, which provides detailed quality information about every certified nursing home in the country. In December 2008, CMS greatly enhanced the usability of the website by adding an easy-to-understand 5-star rating. Each nursing home receives one to five stars based on performance in ...

Some of the most intensive pharmacotherapy today occurs in nursing homes in very complex and vulnerable patients. The nursing home provides an opportunity for highly effective drug use, but it also presents risks for polypharmacy and adverse events. Nursing homes are complex social institutions, in which physicians, nurses, consultant pharmacists, other health care professionals, aides, and adm...

Southern Adelaide Palliative Services (SAPS) is a comprehensive palliative care programme serving the southern region of Adelaide, South Australia, including specialist nursing and medical support, social work, inpatient acute hospital and hospital care, outpatient visits, home care, nursing home consultations, a bereavement program, volunteers, complementary care, and day care. SAPS interfaces...

We compared the clinical presentation and treatment outcomes of corneal and scleral perforations in geriatric nursing home residents, geriatric community residents, and non-geriatric population. The medical records of patients who were treated for corneal and scleral perforations at the Prince of Wales Hospital, Hong Kong between January 1, 2004 and May 1, 2013, were reviewed retrospectively. O...