By performing research together with residents, their representatives, nursing home staff and national stakeholders, Katya’s research resulted in the assessment method: Connecting Conversations (Ruimte voor Zorg). Connecting Conversations assesses experienced quality of care in nursing homes from the resident’s perspective by conducting separate conversations - in an appreciative form - with a resident, a family member of that resident and a professional caregiver of that resident (care triad). Interviewers are nursing home staff members who perform conversations with a supportive app in each other’s care organizations after having received a training (learning network).  It steps away from ratings and rankings and can facilitate identifying residents-families-caregivers’ needs and detect learning and improvement points.

Connecting Conversations is valuable for many different stakeholders. Residents, their families and professional caregivers are provided with a method that can contribute towards quality improvements that are considered important to them. In addition, these stories provide client council members with rich information that they can use to support their residents’ needs. Team managers can use the stories to learn from and improve with on a team level; and higher management can gain insight into how their care organizations are truly being experienced. For national stakeholders, the stories can contribute towards providing information about the experienced quality of care of care organizations. This information can be used to purchase high quality of care (health insurance companies), monitor and ensure high quality of care (the Health and Youth Care Inspectorate) and stimulate continuous quality improvements founded on these stories (the National Health Care Institute). In addition, for education, both the new view on quality of care and the value of quality assessments by means of stories can be introduced to students to broaden their view on quality of care.

Ideally, Connecting Coversations and its principles can support a shift in the nursing home culture, in which mandatory registrations, tasks and checklists make more room for conversations, relationships and a learning culture. This can contribute towards achieving a higher quality of care, quality of life and quality of work for residents, family and staff in nursing homes.

Click here for the full dissertation.
Click here for the factsheet ' Ruimte voor Zorg' (in Dutch)