Piloting Me and My Wishes-Videos of Nursing Home Residents' Preferences.

Abstract

A key challenge in nursing homes (NHs) is how to attain and clarify resident preferences for care and then communicate these preferences to family members and staff. We evaluated the feasibility and acceptability of Me & My Wishes-person-centered videos of residents discussing their preferences for daily and end-of-life (EOL) care. For this descriptive study, Me & My Wishes videos were created with residents in three NHs in the Pacific Northwest. Feasibility was evaluated by tracking resident enrollment, completing and sharing their video, and conducting debriefing interviews to ascertain residents' impressions of the recording process and personalized conversation. After viewing the video, staff and family assessed communication quality via survey-the extent to which they perceived messages from the video (e.g., preferences for EOL) to be timely, accurate, adequate, complete, and credible and items on resident preferences for daily and EOL care. Twenty of 33 residents approached created videos; 18 of these residents shared their videos with family or staff. Residents reported that they liked the opportunity to express their wishes. On a scale of 1-7 (lower is better), mean ratings were 2.0 (family) and 1.3 (staff) for communicating preferences for daily care; 1.9 (family) and 1.2 (staff) for communicating preferences for EOL. Both family and staff reported increased knowledge about resident preferences for daily and EOL care. This research supports the feasibility and acceptability of a videotaping approach (Me & My Wishes) for viewing, listening, and discussing residents' preferences for daily and EOL care.