Running a Nursing Home Business: Risk, Opportunity or Challenge for Nurse Entrepreneurs

Abstract

Background: Aging society is recently the most concerning issue which many countries in this world are facing inevitably including Thailand. There are several problems coming with elderly people such as chronic diseases, disability, or dependency. Some family members cannot appropriately take care of an older member. Nursing home is one of alternative solutions to care for elderly people in society, especially the nursing home where it is managed by registered nurses who have well understanding in term of holistic and humanized care for increasing the quality of elderlies’ life. Objective of this study was to describe lived experiences of being nurse entrepreneurs of nursing home business.      

Methods: Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology was applied as a research methodology. 12 nurse entrepreneurs who have operated the nursing home over 3 years are willing to participate in the study. In-depth interviews and observation were used for data collection.  Data were analyzed by using van Manen’s content analysis.

Results: The findings consisted of 3 major themes: 1) Applying nursing knowledge and experiences for running business which include subcategories which are; 1.1) financial management 1.2) staff recruitment 1.3) place and location 1.4) network building with hospitals 1.5) advertisement to promote nursing home and 1.6) quality of care,  2) Self-development for being success, and 3) gaining unexpected outcomes as follows: 3.1) being happy when working with preferable job 3.2) being proud to help other families 3.3) feelings as caring for their own family and 3.4) getting business profit and beyond.

Conclusion: The research findings showed that nurses gained business profit and personal outcomes for running nursing home business. These findings could be beneficial for new entrepreneurs especially nurses who want to run this business and be the information for the administrators to promote those nurses and determine the standard of nursing home business appropriately. However, nurses still need to learn more about business skills to deal with any managerial problems effectively.