Impact of Educational and Professional Supportive Interventions on Nursing Home Quality Indicators

Indicators of quality of care in 10 main outcomes: dementia (e.g.,prevalence of cognitive assessment), behavioural disturbances (e.g., prevalence of behavioural disturbances assessment), restraining (e.g., prevalence of restrained residents with a medical prescription for restraining), mood (e.g., prevalence of mood assessment), osteoporosis and falls (e.g., systematic analysis of fall records), nutrition (e.g., prevalence of residents who were weighed ≥ 3 times in the last 3 months), pressure ulcers (e.g., prevalence of residents who were evaluated for the risk of pressure ulcers), pain (e.g., prevalence of residents who were evaluated for pain among residents in end-of-life), medication (e.g., prevalence of re-evaluation of residents' drug prescriptions among residents who take psychotropic), and care and services (e.g., prevalence of hospitalisations in the emergency department in the last 12 months).

Onset of dependence will be measured using the 6-item Katz ADL scale. Activities examined are: bathing, dressing, transferring, walking inside home, incontinence, and eating/drinking. Ability in executing each activity will be set as: "able to execute alone, without difficulty", "able to execute alone, with some difficulty", or "needing help to execute or unable to execute".

It will be examined if the rate of antidepressants, anxiolytics, antipsychotics, and hypnotics/sedatives (coded according to the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical classification. Information available at: http://www.whocc.no/atc_ddd_index/) prescriptions will be reduced between baseline and follow-up. A particular attention will be given to the prevalence of people taking 3 or more psychotropics (increased risk of drug-drug interaction and adverse drug reaction) and to the use of these medications among people with dementia.