Nursing standard for elderly to take effect Jan 1

The nation's first State-level standard on nursing safety for the elderly will officially take effect on Jan 1 after a trial operation, senior officials from the Ministry of Civil Affairs said.

The standard was first proposed by the ministry, the State Administration for Market Regulation and the Standardization Administration in December 2019 and operated on a trial basis over the past two years. The standard aims to improve and standardize the services of nursing houses for the elderly.

Li Banghua, the civil affairs ministry's vice-director of endowment services, said at a news conference on Thursday that the nursing industry greatly benefits the Chinese people, and it is also a key part of the modern services industry. It's necessary to standardize nursing services to contribute to the nation's high-quality development goals, he said.

According to the ministry, the standard includes eight subordinate industry standards.

"In the subordinate standard on catering services, for example, the nursing home is required to offer a clean eating environment and cook properly with quality ingredients, and offer good services to the elderly," Li said.

"Catering services should be tailored in accordance with seniors' health conditions and food preferences," he added. "It's their basic and most important work to serve the elderly good food. This subordinate standard will help improve their nutrition and improve service standards."

Other subordinate standards include preventing seniors from falling down at nursing homes and evaluating their nutritional levels

Li added that the ministry has made great efforts to train administrative officials and organize lectures for nursing home staff during the trial operation, while also collecting responses from grassroots-level nursing homes to perfect the standard.

"We've organized both online and in-house lectures at nursing homes and social welfare centers to teach staff the importance of the standard," he said. "We also strengthened the punishments on behaviors breaching the standard."

Zhang Shifei, the ministry's vice-director on policies and regulations, said at the news conference that the ministry will further enhance supervision on the standard's implementation by developing a nationwide evaluation system for the nursing homes.

He said that the ministry will also designate some nursing homes as pilot stations to promote their experiences.

"We will also further improve the nursing standard in the future, for example, in areas of smart nursing services, domestic nursing services and nursing services involving medical treatment to help the elderly enjoy higher quality life."