Background: Residents of nursing homes are increasingly frail and dependent. At the same time, there are increased demands for quality of care and social life for individual residents. In this article, we explore how care workers contribute to quality of care and social life in shared living rooms in nursing homes.
Methods: An ethnographically inspired design was applied, and a purposive sample of six units for long-term care in three nursing homes in Norway was included in the study. Data were collected by participant observation, including informal conversations with the staff and residents, and the data were analyzed using thematic analysis.
Results: The analysis identified three main themes: working within the given context, creating care practices and organizing activities. The empirical findings demonstrate that care work focuses on meeting both the residents’ physical and social needs and aiming for high-quality care and social life for the residents in nursing homes.
Conclusion: The results of this study illustrate that nursing home practices are focused on residents as a group. However, care workers take advantage of personal skills and resources to work towards person-centred care within the given context. The quality of care is recognized in terms of how care workers meet individual residents’ needs. The quality of care seems highly related to the capability and skills of individual care workers.
Keywords: nursing home, quality of care, person-centred care, social needs, activity, qualitative study, participant observation