Nursing Home Survey on Patient Safety Culture

This chapter describes respondents within the participating nursing homes. The data presented here are based on respondents' answers to survey questions about their job title, the nursing home work area/unit where they spent most of their work time, their direct interaction with residents, and additional respondent characteristics. In the tables presented in this chapter, respondents from nursing homes that omitted one of these questions, or those who did not respond, are shown as missing in the tables and are excluded from total percentages.

Job Title 

More than one-third of respondents (35 percent) selected "Nursing Assistant/Aide" as their job title, followed by "Support Staff" (18 percent), and "Licensed Nurse" (17 percent), as shown in Table 4-1.

Work Area

Most respondents (46 percent) indicated they work in many different areas or no specific area of the nursing home; 21 percent worked in the "Skilled nursing unit" (Table 4-2). The Nursing Home Survey on Patient Safety Culture uses generic categories for nursing home work areas and units. Therefore, a large percentage of respondents chose the "Other" response option, which allowed them to note their specific work area or unit. Participating nursing homes were not asked to submit written or other-specify responses for any questions, so no data are available to further describe the respondents in the "Other" work area category. 

Interaction With Residents 

As shown in Table 4-3, most respondents (71 percent) indicated they had direct interaction with residents.

Additional Respondent Characteristics

Charts 4-1 through 4-4 display the following additional workplace characteristics reported by database respondents:

• Tenure in current nursing home.
• Usual hours worked per week.
• Shift worked most often.
• Staffing agency status.