Quality of life: its meaning to the long-term care resident

1. While the physical and recreational environments have been shown to be important to the mental health of the long-term care resident, human relationships and social contact have been described as being far more important in determining quality of life. 2. This study identified two new findings as contributing to quality of life--caring for oneself and the importance of helping others. 3. Failure to accurately assess a resident's ability to provide self-care may lead to excess disability, a situation in which a resident may become more functionally disabled, in part, due to the staff performing more care than is actually needed.