The resident dining room--a CQI project

The resident dining room was noisy, food was served cold and late, food containers were hard to open, and food preferences were not respected. Verbal and physical confrontation was common, there were no specified meal hours, and care givers were not available to assist residents during meals. A multidisciplinary Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) committee was convened to look at the situation. Brainstorming and prioritizing resulted in a list of items to be addressed. A plan was developed and implemented in 2 phases: divide the dining room and residents into smaller groups, improve traffic flow, open a cafeteria line, focus services to meet resident needs, make tray delivery and clean up more efficient, and extend meal hours.