gms | German Medical Science

Background and Purpose: In Germany, about 7% of the nursing home residents are younger than 66 years (Statistical Federal Office, 2017). Little is known about the characteristics of this age group. It is not clear if they differ from older residents. The purpose of this study is to describe and compare younger and older nursing home residents due to gender, care dependency and medical diagnostic groups.

Methods: A secondary analysis of cross sectional studies in German nursing homes from 2014, 2015 and 2016 was conducted by Charité Berlin using a standardized questionnaire. The convenience sample consisted in total of 2753 residents in 14 (2014), 16 (2015) and 8 (2016) institutions. Procedures of descriptive and interferential statistics were calculated using SPSS 24.

Results: The samples were composed of 1091 residents in 2014, 994 in 2015 and 668 in 2016 (response rates: 86.9; 86.2 and 86.3%). 11.7% of the residents were younger than 65 years in 2014, 10.6% in 2015 and 13.0% in 2016. Most of the younger residents lived occasionally on wards with a high average of age. The younger residents were more often male (x²; p˂ 0.000), had a higher care dependency level (x²; p˂ 0.000), had more often a mental illness (x²; p˂ 0.05) and had less frequent a dementia (x²; p˂ 0.000) than the older residents (2014, 2015 and 2016).

Conclusions: This exploratory study showed differences between younger and older nursing home residents which should be investigated more deeply in further studies.