Finnish nurses' perceptions of care of older patients

Abstract

The aim of the study was to explore how far the perceptions of care of nurses in Finland take into account the preferences of the older patient and the patient's family members and to evaluate related background factors. The data were collected by questionnaire with nurses (n=167) working in a geriatric hospital. The questionnaire contained items about shared decision-making, attitudes to nursing patients, assessment of patients' functional ability and need for care, goal-setting, evaluation of outcomes and discharge planning. This study showed that taking into account the preferences of the patient and the patient's family members regarding the patient's care was challenging for the nurses in practice. About one-third of the nurses reported making the decisions on a patient's care themselves and not respecting patient autonomy in situations where patients are not able to assess their own situation. In addition, the nurses reported asking for the views of patients less frequently than those of family members when assessing and setting patient care goals. In practice, nurses need to be aware of this, during the transition from routine-centred care to patient-centred care.

Nurses' attitudes towards older people care: An integrative review

“…2015) used the Kogan Attitudes towards Old People (KATOP) scale to assess attitudes towards older adults; one using it indirectly to measure attitudes towards older people with respect to the difficulties they experienced in older patient care. Four studies used researcher developed Likert‐style surveys including the Ageism Attitude Scale measuring positive/negative discrimination (Polat, Karada, Ülger, & Demir, ), a scale for measuring nurses' perceptions of care of older people (Eloranta et al., ) and a scale measuring attitudes towards the care of elderly; nurse‐patient ratio and care of the elderly; factors influencing care of the elderly and knowledge of the ageing process (Oyetunde et al. ).…”

“…Nurses held both positive and negative attitudes towards caring for older adults. Six studies reported nurses' overall positive attitudes (Adibelli & Kilic, ; Eloranta et al., ; Gillis, MacDonald, & MacIsaac, ; Liu, Norman, & While, ; Oyetunde, Ojo, & Ojewale, ; Polat et al., ), and two studies reported nurses' overall negative attitudes towards older adult care (De Almeida Tavares et al., ; Higgins et al., ).…”

Developing a Taxonomy and Mapping Concepts of Shared Decision Making to Improve Clinicians Understanding

“…Tacit consent is concerned with citizenship that residing in a country implies that one agrees with the authority of that country. This principle ignores the ability of a person to change their situation, and Hume 33 provides the following analogy. A person who is carried onto a ship involuntarily now finds himself subject to the commands of the captain.…”

Shared Decision Making in Residential Aged Care: A Framework Synthesis

“…Paternalistic attitudes are a common social norm in RAC [29] [36] [39] [58] and the antithesis of SDM-there is an imbalance of power between clinicians and patients created by law and specialist knowledge [59]. Paternalism is frequently driven by clinician's belief that they know what is best for patients.…”

“…There is a tension between strong commitment by staff to keeping residents safe and violating their right to choice and autonomy [36] [39]. For SDM to be effective clinicians must relinquish their role as the single, paternalistic authority and train to become more effective coaches or partners [2].…”