Is hostel care good for you? Quality of life measures in older people moving into residential care

Objectives: For many older adults, moving into hostel accommodation can be a stressful and traumatic process. The impact of this move on the quality of life and function after a three month adjustment period was evaluated in this study. Method: A Folstein Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), Modified Barthel Index (MBI), Short Form 36 (SF-36) and demographic information was collected prior to entry to hostel accommodation. The SF-36 was repeated three months after admission. The SF-36 has eight domains: physical functioning, role physical, bodily pain, role emotional, mental health, vitality, general health, and social functioning. Results: Fifty subjects met the inclusion criteria and moved into hostel accommodation during the study period. The MMSE had a mean ± sd 26.6± 3.29 (highest cognition score = 30) and the MBI 93.4 ± 5.71 (highest level of independence score = 100), with no gender or age effect. The SF-36 improved in 7/8 domains (p<0.05) after admission to hostel, with only mental health not improving significantly. Despite improving, physical functioning remained below the age and gender matched Australian norm for the SF-36 in both males and females aged over 75. For women there also continued to be a reduction in social function, general health and mental health. Conclusions: This study showed that both men and women had an overall increase in their quality of Life after admission to hostel care. A comparison of our group to the Australian age and gender matched norms for quality of life illustrated that for many in our group their quality of life compared favourably to people living in the community, and that moving into hostel accommodation had been shown to be a valuable option.