ABILITY OF SURROGATES TO REPRESENT SATISFACTION OF NURSING-HOME RESIDENTS WITH QUALITY OF CARE

Objective: To measure the ability of surrogates to accurately represent nursing home residents' satisfaction with the nursing home care. Design: Comparison by correlation analysis of questionnaire answers by nursing-home residents and their designated surrogates. Setting: Four non-profit community nursing homes. Participants: One-hundred fifty-two resident-surrogate pairs were included, based on the following criteria: (1) the resident was able to respond to questions verbally and in English, had cognitive abilities sufficient to understand the questions, and had a responsible party who had a telephone number in the medical record; (2) both the resident and the surrogate agreed to be interviewed. Outcome Measures: A 26-item instrument (21 specific and 5 global items) was developed to measure surrogates' perceptions of residents' satisfaction with the quality of the physician services, nursing care, and the nursing home environment. The instrument was scored on a 4-point Likert scale in which higher scores indicated greater satisfaction and paralleled a similar instrument designed for nursing home residents. Correlation of residents' with surrogates' scores on the satisfaction instrument was examined. Results: The mean score for most items was greater than 3.0, indicating overall satisfaction with the care. Correlations between surrogates and residents on specific items ranged from 0.1 to 0.55. Correlations were highest for global items and items addressing satisfaction with the environment. Conclusion: We conclude that nursing home residents' surrogates cannot accurately express the residents' satisfaction with all areas of nursing home care and that their evaluations should not be taken in lieu of the residents' opinions.