Grant: Project Grant - Priority Announcement: Aging

Care aides (personal support workers, nursing assistants) provide most of the direct care for older adults (residents) who live in nursing homes. For example, they help residents with eating, taking baths, and other daily activities. However, care aides often leave some of these tasks undone. This is partly because nursing homes do not have enough care aides to complete the tasks. Yet, lack of staff alone does not explain why some tasks are left undone. Researchers found that care aides in well-resourced nursing homes also reported care tasks left undone. Besides a shortage of care aides, we do not know what other factors can cause care aides to leave tasks undone and how these factors cause tasks to be left undone. We also currently do not know what changes can be made to prevent tasks from being left undone. Our study will answer these questions by asking care aides themselves. We will have conversations with about 48 care aides who work in nursing homes in Alberta and British Columbia. We will ask them questions such as: What happened when you left tasks undone? and What could have helped you to complete the tasks? We will use the knowledge learned from this study to develop an intervention to help care aides reduce tasks left undone. Our long-term goal is to improve the quality of care and quality of life for residents in nursing homes.