Dreams that lie in tatters: the changing fortunes of nurses who left the British NHS to own and run residential homes for elderly people

During the 1980s, many nurses decided to take up the challenge of managing a residential home in the private sector. Government policy fuelled the dramatic growth of the market, but subsequent policy changes have threatened the financial viability of many residential homes. In this study of homes in the county of Devon, proprietors drawn from a representative sample took part in semi-structured interviews and then completed two follow-up questionnaires. More than a quarter of the sample had previously worked as nurses. Following the introduction of the 1990 NHS and Community Care Act, many proprietors faced increasing difficulty in filling places in their homes, and this led to increasing worries over financial viability, with resultant increases in reported stress levels. 41 references.