Assessing the quality of residential care for the aged

The standard of quality of care in Australian nursing homes is assessed by standards monitoring teams who use their expert judgement and a set of guidelines based on seven objectives and thirty-one standards. In this article, the possibility of supplementing the teams' expert judgement with information gained from standardised questionnaires is explored. Following a review of environment-focussed and resident-focussed instruments, an overview of the scales is provided and the idea of using standardised questionnaires in the standards monitoring process is discussed in terms of possible future developments.