Nurses’ and Care Workers’ Perception of Care Quality in Japanese Long-Term Care Wards: A Qualitative Descriptive Study

Despite the growing importance of long-term care for older adults, there has been limited attention to its quality assurance issues in Japan. To start planning the initiation of continuous quality improvement in long-term care hospitals, we explored how nurses and care workers themselves perceived current approaches to quality assurance and improvement on their ward. We interviewed 16 licensed nurses and nine care workers, transcribed and analyzed data using qualitative content analysis techniques, and derived six categories: keeping clients alive is barely possible, the absence of a long-term care practice model, the lack of quality indicators, long-term care hospitals as places for castaways, client quality of life as a source of satisfaction, and conflict between staff and client well-being. To develop continuous quality improvement in Japanese long-term care hospitals, it may be first necessary to introduce a practice model of long-term care and mechanisms to evaluate quality.