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Challenges to conducting research with older people living in nursing homes

BACKGROUND: Although older people are increasingly cared for in nursing homes towards the end of life, there is a dearth of research exploring the views of residents. There are however, a number of challenges and methodological issues involved in doing this. The aim of this paper is to discuss some...

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Autores principales: Hall, Sue, Longhurst, Susan, Higginson, Irene J
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2009
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2745410/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19703277
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2318-9-38
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author Hall, Sue
Longhurst, Susan
Higginson, Irene J
author_facet Hall, Sue
Longhurst, Susan
Higginson, Irene J
author_sort Hall, Sue
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Although older people are increasingly cared for in nursing homes towards the end of life, there is a dearth of research exploring the views of residents. There are however, a number of challenges and methodological issues involved in doing this. The aim of this paper is to discuss some of these, along with residents' views on taking part in a study of the perceptions of dignity of older people in care homes and make recommendations for future research in these settings. METHODS: Qualitative interviews were used to obtain the views on maintaining dignity of 18 people aged 75 years and over, living in two private nursing homes in South East London. Detailed field notes on experiences of recruiting and interviewing participants were kept. RESULTS: Challenges included taking informed consent (completing reply slips and having a 'reasonable' understanding of their participation); finding opportunities to conduct interviews; involvement of care home staff and residents' families and trying to maintain privacy during the interviews. Most residents were positive about their participation in the study, however, five had concerns either before or during their interviews. Although 15 residents seemed to feel free to air their views, three seemed reluctant to express their opinions on their care in the home. CONCLUSION: Although we experienced many challenges to conducting this study, they were not insurmountable, and once overcome, allowed this often unheard vulnerable group to express their views, with potential long-term benefits for future delivery of care.
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spelling pubmed-27454102009-09-17 Challenges to conducting research with older people living in nursing homes Hall, Sue Longhurst, Susan Higginson, Irene J BMC Geriatr Research Article BACKGROUND: Although older people are increasingly cared for in nursing homes towards the end of life, there is a dearth of research exploring the views of residents. There are however, a number of challenges and methodological issues involved in doing this. The aim of this paper is to discuss some of these, along with residents' views on taking part in a study of the perceptions of dignity of older people in care homes and make recommendations for future research in these settings. METHODS: Qualitative interviews were used to obtain the views on maintaining dignity of 18 people aged 75 years and over, living in two private nursing homes in South East London. Detailed field notes on experiences of recruiting and interviewing participants were kept. RESULTS: Challenges included taking informed consent (completing reply slips and having a 'reasonable' understanding of their participation); finding opportunities to conduct interviews; involvement of care home staff and residents' families and trying to maintain privacy during the interviews. Most residents were positive about their participation in the study, however, five had concerns either before or during their interviews. Although 15 residents seemed to feel free to air their views, three seemed reluctant to express their opinions on their care in the home. CONCLUSION: Although we experienced many challenges to conducting this study, they were not insurmountable, and once overcome, allowed this often unheard vulnerable group to express their views, with potential long-term benefits for future delivery of care. BioMed Central 2009-08-24 /pmc/articles/PMC2745410/ /pubmed/19703277 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2318-9-38 Text en Copyright © 2009 Hall et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Hall, Sue
Longhurst, Susan
Higginson, Irene J
Challenges to conducting research with older people living in nursing homes
title Challenges to conducting research with older people living in nursing homes
title_full Challenges to conducting research with older people living in nursing homes
title_fullStr Challenges to conducting research with older people living in nursing homes
title_full_unstemmed Challenges to conducting research with older people living in nursing homes
title_short Challenges to conducting research with older people living in nursing homes
title_sort challenges to conducting research with older people living in nursing homes
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2745410/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19703277
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2318-9-38
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