title: Does empowering resident families or nursing home employees in decision making improve service quality?
abstract: This research examines how the empowerment of residents' family members and nursing home employees in managerial decision making is related to service quality. The study was conducted using data from 33 nursing homes in the United States. Surveys were administered to more than 1,000 employees on-site and mailed to the primary-contact family member of each resident. The resulting multilevel data were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling. The empowerment of families in decision making was positively associated with their perceptions of service quality. The empowerment of nursing staff in decision making was more strongly related to service quality than the empowerment of nonnursing staff. Among nursing staff, the empowerment of nursing assistants improved service quality more than the empowerment of nurses.
authors.affiliation: University of Texas at Arlington, USA dhamann@uta.edu.
authors.forename: Darla J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Hamann
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D003256:Community Participation / Q000379:methods / Q000523:psychology; D003657:Decision Making; D005190:Family / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006707:Homes for the Aged / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D008134:Long-Term Care / Q000379:methods / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017146:Models, Organizational; D009735:Nursing Homes / Q000592:standards*; D011209:Power, Psychological; D011368:Professional-Family Relations; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D014481:United States
keywords: customer empowerment; decision making; employee empowerment; family councils; long-term care; nursing home; service quality