CHALLENGES OF TRAINING OLDER ADULTS IN A HOME HEALTH CARE CONTEXT

摘要

The health care domain is experiencing a shift from traditional hospital-based care to care delivered in apatient's home setting. Although home health care provides many benefits, it creates new challenges anddifficulties for professional caregivers (e.g., registered nurses) who are performing complex medical taskswithout the support often present in a health care environment. In addition to performing these tasksthemselves, registered nurses are also responsible for training patients to perform many of these tasks,which may include using medical devices and managing complex medication regimens. The purpose of thisresearch was to identify and systematically categorize the issues facing registered nurses (RNs) whentraining older adult patients. Eight RNs participated in individual structured interviews wherein they wereasked to describe the difficulties and frustrations associated with training older adult patients to use medicaldevices and manage medication independently. The data were categorized as patient-related, RN-related, orsituation-related issues. The results highlight the complexity of training device use and medicationmanagement, as well as the needs of RNs for forms of additional support in training older adult patients.