Healthcare Areas

In a survey conducted in 2019, the HQCA asked residents living in designated supportive living:

Are the rules here reasonable?

Residents could choose “Yes, always / Yes, sometimes / No, hardly ever / No, never”

Rules, or the standards, policies, and procedures a site has in place to support operations, can sometimes feel restrictive to residents. Residents understand that rules are in place to increase resident safety and ensure smooth operations.  However, sometimes rules can create real or perceived barriers to improving a resident’s quality of life or empowering residents to live as independently as possible. For example, there may be an established schedule when breakfast is served, to ensure staff time is being well-managed. However, this may reduce the time available for residents to complete their morning routine (e.g., dress themselves, bathe, etc.) and limits their choice of when to have their meals.

There are a number of factors providers and leaders can consider to better understand and improve resident experiences with rules. Some questions they could ask before taking action include:

• Which rules are residents thinking about when answering this question?
• What is it about the rule(s) that feels unreasonable to residents?
• How might the rule be revisited to allow for more individualized care?
• Are staff interpreting the rule correctly and applying it in a way that may be impacting residents?
• When was the last time the rules were reviewed, updated, and/or eliminated, if they are no longer relevant or necessary?
• How can residents and their loved ones comment or make suggestions about the rules?
• Who should be involved in discussions to improve these results? How could residents and/or family members be engaged to develop solutions? What other collaboration might be required to make improvements in this area?

For information about the HQCA’s designated supportive living resident experience survey, please visit the HQCA website.

The Health Quality Council of Alberta uses the Alberta Quality Matrix for Health as a way of organizing information and thinking around the complexity of the healthcare system. This measure can be used as input to assess supported living’s performance in these dimensions of quality: Acceptability and Safety.

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