For the elderly who plan to live in a nursing home, it is not rare that the health evaluation conducted by the nursing homes themselves before their settlement is exaggerated, due to the homes’ eagerness to charge more for over-evaluated caring services.

Now, after training, a batch of certified appraisers will work for hundreds of nursing homes in Shanghai to evaluate potential residents’ conditions before they move to the healthcare institutions.

2000 appraisers will be trained in a program co-launched by the Shanghai Elderly Service Industry Association and Shanghai Open University this year. The trainees all have work experience in nursing, medical treatment and rehabilitation. With a passed assessment at the end of the training, trainees will be certified.

According to Wang Songhua, responsible for non-diploma education at the Shanghai Open University, the training includes a basic knowledge of physiology and psychology of the elderly, as well as the interpretation of the classification of care services, both theoretically and physically.

Wang said that the qualified appraisers will take reference to five categories of indicators including the elderly’s self-care ability, cognitive status, emotional behavior, vision, and adaptability to see what kind of caring services they need, so as to form targeted care plans.