An appropriate number of qualified staff is a key factor contributing to quality of care and quality of life for nursing home residents. While much of the literature focuses on the importance of adequate nursing ratios, this descriptive study is the first to focus on the social services staff ratio. Nationally representative survey results from over 1,000 nursing home social services directors reveal that the mean number of residents per full-time equivalent social worker in the United States is 89.3 and the median is 79 residents (note that this figure includes both long-term and subacute residents). Furthermore, although the federal government requires nursing homes with more than 120 beds to employ 1 full-time qualified social worker to meet resident psychosocial needs, when asked their opinion, the majority of respondents indicated that 1 full-time social worker could handle 60 or fewer long-term care residents or 20 or fewer subacute care residents. Nursing home characteristics helped to explain the variation in social services directors' opinions. These findings suggest that the federal policy related to social services staffing should be revisited. Policy makers would benefit from reliable and current data regarding social service staffing. Research is needed to understand the relationship between social services staffing and resident outcomes.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 27 February 2015.
All research outputs
#28,640,943
of 34,410,798 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Aging & Social Policy
#478
of 575 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#218,134
of 234,243 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Aging & Social Policy
#2
of 2 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,410,798 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 9th percentile – i.e., 9% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 575 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 9.8. This one is in the 1st percentile – i.e., 1% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 234,243 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 4th percentile – i.e., 4% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 2 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one.
