Comparative study of quality of life of elderly nursing home residents and those attending a day Center

The aim of this study was to compare the QOL of the elderly living in nursing homes and those who attend the Day Center (Centro Dia) at the the Asilo Vila Vicentina in the city of Bauru/SP. The sample consisted of 48 subjects, 21 men, 5 from the Day Center and 16 nursing home residents, and 27 women, 16 from the Day Center and 11 nursing homes residents, who answered the following questionnaires: socio-demographic characteristics, WHOQOL-Old, and WHOQOL-Bref. The responses were submitted to descriptive and inferential statistics to compare the QOL scores of the nursing home residents with the elderly who attend the Day Center using the Mann Whitney test. The results showed better QOL scores for the elderly who attend the Day Center, in which women stood out. Among the institutionalized elderly, women presented the worst QOL values, particularly in the Physical and Psychological domains. The domains with the lowest scores were Environment (42.6 [+ or -] 10.7 for women in nursing homes and 44.4 [+ or -] 9.7 for men at the Day Center) and Intimacy (13.1 [+ or -] 17.3 for women in nursing homes and 9.4 [+ or -] 22.7 for men in nursing homes). The domains with the highest scores were Social Affairs (74.0 [+ or -] 13.6 for women at the Day Center and 68.3 [+ or -] 10.9 for men at the Day Center) and Death/Dying (83.6 [+ or -] 22.0 for women at the Day Center and 80.0 [+ or -] 32.6 for men at the Day Center).