Providing residential care to older Australians: Issues for registered nurses
Jacqueline Jones
Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Research into Nursing and Health Care, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Division of Health Sciences,
University of South Australia, Adelaide SA
Julianne Cheek
Institute of Nursing and Health Sciences, University of Oslo, Norway; Centre for Research into Sustainable Health Care, University of South Australia, SA
Alison Ballantyne
Senior Lecturer, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Division of Health Sciences, University of South Australia, SA
PP: 225 - 234
Abstract
Contemporary nursing in residential aged care facilities poses many challenges. Issues impacting on registered nurses providing care to older Australians living in residential aged care settings are explored and described in this paper. Five broad themes emerged from the analysis of thirty interviews with Registered Nurses, eleven focus groups with participants who worked with registered nurses in the residential aged care facilities selected in the sample, and five nominal groups, which consisted of key stakeholders from the aged care industry and professional nursing forums. These themes were:
- a changing and increasingly complex role;
- perceptions of the registered nurse in residential aged care and how to deal with them;
- the need for strategies to work with others;
- coping with the everyday demands; and
- dealing with a sense of powerlessness and lack of control.
The identified themes form the basis of the paper's discussion.
Keywords
qualitative research; registered nurses; older people; residential aged care
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