Nursing Home Placement & Incontinence

According to Chutka, Fleming, Evans, Evans, and Andrews (1996), urinary incontinence is an ongoing and frequent problem of people placed living in nursing home, requiring complex management practices for those working with these patients. However, the question can be asked as to whether incontinence is, of itself, one of the factors that contributes to nursing home placement? The purpose of the presented literature review is to try to answer this question by examining the literature for research investigating whether there is an association between nursing home placement and incontinence.

Even a cursory review of the literature indicates that there may be a relationship between incontinence and nursing home placement such that incontinence increases the risk for nursing home placement. However, the literature also provides reason to think that this is but one of many factors that operate to increase the likelihood that an individual will be placed in a nursing home. For example, Tsuji, Whalen and Finucane (1995) attempted to identify predictors for nursing home placement in 334 homebound frail elderly patients receiving formal home care services.

Several variables were assessed in the study. These included: age, sex, diagnosis, functional status (which included a measure of incontinence), and caregiver conditions. A Cox propor

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allo (2003) also observed that as the number of risk factors increased, the likelihood of nursing home placement also increased. These findings led the authors to conclude that rehabilitation efforts should target specific rehabilitation for those factors (including incontinence) that placed patients at risk for nursing home placement. In another study, Pettersen, Dahl and Wyller (2002) examined characteristics of 142 stroke patients, all of whom were in the early phase of rehabilitation. The authors were interested in what characteristics could predict functional outcomes three years from the date of the research. Subjects in the study were about equally divided between men and women with a median age of 75 years. Outcome measures consisted of several indices of functional ability. It was found that several factors did indeed predict positive rehabilitation outcomes. However, urinary incontinence after three years of rehabilitation was found to be a factor that greatly increased the risk of nursing home placement. The authors felt that incontinence was likely due to the presence of other disabling factors such as concomitant chronic disabling disorders, having another stroke, and so forth. The just reviewed studies clearl
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Whalen Finucane, Dahl Wyller, Rogers Walawander, Conclusions Based, Allen Vassallo, Evans Andrews, Georgia Subjects, Nursing Home, Review Literature, nursing home, home placement, nursing home placement, Clinical Rehabilitation, placement incontinence, home placement incontinence, risk nursing home, predictors nursing, risk nursing, urinary incontinence, predictors nursing home, vassallo 2003, finucane 1995, ouslander maloney, placed nursing, rogers walawander 2001,
Approximate Word count = 1218
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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