Exploring Chinese nursing home residents’ level of need satisfaction with service provision

Need satisfaction of nursing homes residents is always used as a policy strategy to evaluate the wellbeing of nursing home residents (NHRs) and the quality of service in nursing homes. This qualitative research aims to understand the need satisfaction of Chinese NHRs based on the perceptions of older people. This research presents how the residents define, evaluate and categorise their needs; how the residents satisfy their needs; to what extent the residents feel their needs are satisfied by the nursing homes.

The research draws on 60 interviews and more than 2 months of observations conducted in a private nursing home and a private-and-public-partnership nursing home in Nanjing, China in 2022, to collect information about residents’ needs and needs satisfaction.

Residents viewed need in terms of necessity, dependency, individualism and luxury and they had a broad range of needs from necessities such as food and drinks to needs for capability. The combination of individualism and collectivism is the main characteristic of their understanding of needs, which is also reflected in the process of satisfying their needs in nursing homes. However, the priority of the collective is the main highlight as their high level of need satisfaction was largely constructed by the social context that consists of different collectivities such as their family, the nursing homes and the wider society.