title: Assisted living: a place to manage uncertainty. The ambiguity of assisted living is unavoidable because residents' needs are always changing. The Wheat Valley example is used to examine this concept.
abstract: The assisted living environment lacks the satisfying clarity of the consumer model (a stay at the Holiday Inn) or the medical model (the hospital or nursing home). Yet the ambiguity of assisted living is unavoidable because it shelters individuals whose needs are changing, the model of care requires extensive negotiation with residents, and staff members must continually compromise as they implement the principles. Assisted living is a place where uncertainty is managed, not resolved. This indicates a need for the further pursuit of qualitative research, such as reported by these articles and others (e.g., Carder, 2002), to explore how participants construct, make sense of, and interpret their daily experience in assisted living.
authors.affiliation: Gerontology Center, University of Kansas, Lawrence 66045-7555, USA.
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Ekerdt
mesh_terms: D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000368:Aged; D040561:Assisted Living Facilities / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D003659:Decision Making, Organizational; D015577:Geriatric Assessment / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D016294:Models, Nursing; D008960:Models, Psychological; D020380:Needs Assessment / Q000458:organization & administration*; D009730:Nursing Assessment / Q000458:organization & administration; D009936:Organizational Innovation; D010358:Patient Participation; D035501:Uncertainty