Introduction
Present-day healthcare institutions pay particular attention to the quality of their services and their patients’ satisfaction. However, to track the progress, it is critical to develop a scale allowing to measure different aspects of geriatric care (Miller, n.d.). This task is the sole responsibility of a geriatric social worker who has to effectively assess the medical personnel’s response to the needs of residents in nursing homes.
Main body
The difficulty of this objective is defined by the complexity of the set of questions that are supposed to cover all the aspects of healthcare services provision and the inclusion of numerous respondents. Both staff and patients participate in the assessment, and the difference in their perspectives might bring specific systematic and random errors. In this way, the scale becomes vulnerable to them and requires reconsideration. Thus, systematic errors are related to the problem with the assessment of the received data due to the difference in perception of needs by nurses and their patients (“Social assessment,” n.d.). Random errors, in turn, are unavoidable and represent the impossibility to cover all the factors that might slightly change the results of patients with similar conditions. Hence, the scale is vulnerable due to the difference in views.
Conclusion
However, it is possible to check the reliability of an assessment tool to minimize the risks of systematic errors. The first method is to conduct preliminary tests among samples of patients to reveal factors such as grieving and anxiety that can influence the results of the ultimate screening (“Introductory guide,” n.d.). In this way, it will be possible to include more variables in the assessment, and its results will be more precise. The second option to test the reliability of the scale is to conduct the same survey but at different times to see if the outcome changes. In this case, the scale will be considered reliable if the results are consistent.
References
Introductory guide to gerontological social work (n.d.). Web.
Miller, H. (n.d.). Responsibilities of social workers in elderly homes. Chron. Web.
Social assessment (n.d.). Web.