Although it is said that social awareness has improved in South Korea as the Long-term care insurance (LTCI) reaches its 15th year, there has been still distrust in Long-term care(LTC) facilities. One of the reasons why nursing facilities are not trus...
Although it is said that social awareness has improved in South Korea as the Long-term care insurance (LTCI) reaches its 15th year, there has been still distrust in Long-term care(LTC) facilities. One of the reasons why nursing facilities are not trusted is because there are many restrictions on autonomy due to group living rather than an environment like one's own home. In this respect, person-centered care, an alternative perspective, has been highlighted. However, Korea LTC facilities are operated in accordance with the Evaluation of the National Long-term Care, and this environment serves as a limitation of person-centered care.
The purpose of this study is to explore factors that promote and inhibit person-centered care in LTC facilities, focusing on content analysis of the Evaluation of the National Long-term Care for nursing facilities. For this purpose, a qualitative content analysis was conducted on eight facilities among the institutions that received excellent grades (A, B grades) in the 2021 Evaluation of the National Long-term Care in the Busan, Ulsan, and Gyeongnam regions.
The six core domains of person-centered care derived from the theory are: respect for autonomy, intimate relationships, home-like environment, staff empowerment, support for functional maintenance, and comfort care. The results of the analysis of how the content of each metric aligns with the categories of person-centered care are as follows.
First, the indicators that promote respect for autonomy are all indicators related to ensuring beneficiaries' rights and additional staffing, while the indicators that hinder autonomy are insufficient staffing standards, narrow facility standards per capita, and safety and comfortable environment where beneficiaries' preferred activities are restricted for safety reasons, and the indicators of cleaning services, meal provision, excretion management, and program provision, which did not guarantee beneficiaries' choice.
Second, the indicators that promoted close relationships between residents(and their families) and staff were the experienced staff with more than two years, utilization of community resources to ensure continued contact with family and community after admission, enhanced residents’ families participation, and dignity and privacy. The hindering indicators encompassed insufficient staffing and high turnover rates, which impeded the development of close relationships with staff.
Third, indicators that promote a homelike environment include the residents (and their families) involvement, which enables the residents to maintain interactions with family and community contacts, participation in community events, as they did at home before admission, family and community interaction, indicators that protect the dignity and privacy of the residents, and indicators of a comfortable and safe living environment for infection control, which also promote a homelike environment.
On the other hand, inhibiting indicators include facility standards that make it difficult to create sufficient personal space, such as small per capita area standards; lack of freedom of access to the outside world for safety reasons; isolation from the outside; and restrictions on individuals' ability to engage in their preferred activities, all of which contribute to nursing homes not being perceived as home-like environments.
Fourth, indicators that promote staff empowerment were identified in the areas of hiring additional staff and developing human resources to empower workforce, improving staff health and well-being, and the overall payroll process, which requires cross-functional collaboration. Hindering indicators were highly related to staffing standards. For example, high turnover due to understaffing made it difficult to develop a workforce with a certain level of specialized care skills, and there was a high level of awareness of the need for upskilling, but guidance did not support it in practice, which was also a barrier.
Fifth, the indicators of maintaining and promoting residents' functioning were perceived positively in most of the processes of integrating beneficiaries' functional status in the provision of benefits and in the planning and delivery of services, but were hindered by one-size-fits-all staffing standards tailored to the number of residents and narrow facility standards consisting of multi-person rooms.
Sixth, in the case of comfortable care, creating a safe and comfortable environment, controlling infectious diseases, interacting with caregivers to promote the emotional stability of the residents, and planning and providing benefits according to the individual characteristics and comprehensive needs of the resident elderly were found to promote comfortable care, but insufficient staffing standards made it difficult to provide care based on the preferences and needs of the residents and the facility structure of multi-person rooms, which cannot guarantee privacy, was seen as a hindering factor.
The findings showed that the staffing standards and facility standards among the evaluation indicators are factors that hinder person-centered care in many areas, and it is most urgent to revise the Welfare of Senior Citizens Act, which is the basis of both indicators, to promote person-centered care in LTC facilities. In addition, it is necessary to improve the safety-first approach to work, which limits beneficiaries' right to choose.
Key words: Person-centered Care, The Evaluation of the National Long-term Care, Long-term Care Facilities, content analysis.