Internationally there is a growing interest in evaluating experienced quality of care to better tailor care to resident’s needs. Narratives are a promising method to achieve this, because they capture experiences, identify conflicting values, and provide rich data that can be used to learn from and improve quality of care with. In the Netherlands, narratives are becoming a more substantial element within the quality improvement cycle of nursing homes. In this symposium, four Dutch research groups will present studies on how different narratives can be used and implemented in nursing homes to achieve and maintain high quality of care for residents.

The first speaker will present how micro-narratives from care staff, residents and significant others enable the evaluation of long-term care. The second speaker will present how stakeholders improve care by reflecting together on rich narrative portraits of residents’ experiences. The third speaker will present the results of a study investigating how the narrative quality evaluation method ‘Connecting Conversations’ can be implemented in nursing home organizations. And, the last speaker will present findings on how the Dutch healthcare inspectorate is currently overseeing the quality of person-centred care in long-term care facilities and discuss the potential of a more reflexive approach using narrative methods.