Honors Theses and Capstones

Date of Award

Spring 2021

Project Type

Senior Honors Thesis

College or School

CHHS

Department

Nursing

Program or Major

Nursing, BSN

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

First Advisor

Kerry Nolte

Second Advisor

Daniel David

Abstract

The older adult population is rising exponentially due to medical advances and the aging of the Baby Boomer Population (Wister, 2005). Many of these older adults are choosing to live in assisted living facilities due to the increased independence and decreased cost of living compared to nursing homes (Grabowski, Stevenson, & Cornell, 2012). Since nurses are the primary directors of care for those in assisted living, the question was asked if they can predict a resident’s length of stay based on their knowledge and clinical judgement. A prospective study was performed at an assisted living facility in Oakland, California to determine the accuracy of nurse’s predictions. In October of 2019, an eMAR was used to gather data from the residents of the facility and nurse’s predictions were recorded. The eMAR was then reviewed again in September of 2020 to determine if the residents still lived at the facility or transferred to another level of care. The data was analyzed using sensitivity and specificity as well as percentage of accuracy of the nurses. 44 out of 64 residents were predicted correctly by the nurses (69% accuracy rate). For the months that were not affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, nurses were 87% accurate. During the peak of Covid-19 (March-May of 2020), nurses were only 50% accurate. It was found that the sensitivity was 70% and specificity was 68%, meaning that nurses were significantly accurate at predicting transitions of care of residents in assisted living facilities, especially during non-pandemic circumstances.

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