Person-Centered Long-Term Care: Perfect May Be the Enemy of Good

In long-term care, some concepts have taken on the nature of a self-evident truth—so-called because to true believers, they require no evidence to justify their merit. One such example is the importance of consistent staff assignment. Years ago, I had a serious tiff with a nursing home administrator when I commented on the potential shortcomings of consistent staff assignment. To be sure, there are data indicating likely benefits of consistent staff assignment in relation to areas such as fewer deficiency citations1 and less staff turnover and absenteeism,2 but so too are there data indicating that it does not relate to job satisfaction3 and may actually decrease staff attention to changes in the care plan.