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The meaning and importance of dignified care: findings from a survey of health and social care professionals
BACKGROUND: There are well established national and local policies championing the need to provide dignity in care for older people. We have evidence as to what older people and their relatives understand by the term ‘dignified care’ but less insight into the perspectives of staff regarding their un...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2013
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3614439/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23517491 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2318-13-28 |
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author | Cairns, Deborah Williams, Veronika Victor, Christina Richards, Sally Le May, Andreé Martin, Wendy Oliver, David |
author_facet | Cairns, Deborah Williams, Veronika Victor, Christina Richards, Sally Le May, Andreé Martin, Wendy Oliver, David |
author_sort | Cairns, Deborah |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: There are well established national and local policies championing the need to provide dignity in care for older people. We have evidence as to what older people and their relatives understand by the term ‘dignified care’ but less insight into the perspectives of staff regarding their understanding of this key policy objective. METHODS: A survey of health and social care professionals across four NHS Trusts in England to investigate how dignified care for older people is understood and delivered. We received 192 questionnaires of the 650 distributed. RESULTS: Health and social care professionals described the meaning of dignified care in terms of their relationships with patients: ‘respect’ (47%), ‘being treated as an individual’ (40%), ‘being involved in decision making’ (26%) and ‘privacy’ (24%). ‘Being treated as an individual’ and ‘maintaining privacy’ were ranked as the most important components of dignified care. Physical caring tasks such as ‘helping with washing, dressing and feeding’ were rarely described as being part of dignified care and attributed much less importance than the relational components. CONCLUSION: Dignity in care is a concept with multiple meanings. Older people and their relatives focus upon the importance of providing physical care when describing what this means to them. Our participants focussed upon the relational aspects of care delivery rather than care itself. Proactive measures are therefore required to ensure that the physical aspects of care are met for all older people receiving care in NHS trusts. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3614439 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2013 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-36144392013-04-03 The meaning and importance of dignified care: findings from a survey of health and social care professionals Cairns, Deborah Williams, Veronika Victor, Christina Richards, Sally Le May, Andreé Martin, Wendy Oliver, David BMC Geriatr Research Article BACKGROUND: There are well established national and local policies championing the need to provide dignity in care for older people. We have evidence as to what older people and their relatives understand by the term ‘dignified care’ but less insight into the perspectives of staff regarding their understanding of this key policy objective. METHODS: A survey of health and social care professionals across four NHS Trusts in England to investigate how dignified care for older people is understood and delivered. We received 192 questionnaires of the 650 distributed. RESULTS: Health and social care professionals described the meaning of dignified care in terms of their relationships with patients: ‘respect’ (47%), ‘being treated as an individual’ (40%), ‘being involved in decision making’ (26%) and ‘privacy’ (24%). ‘Being treated as an individual’ and ‘maintaining privacy’ were ranked as the most important components of dignified care. Physical caring tasks such as ‘helping with washing, dressing and feeding’ were rarely described as being part of dignified care and attributed much less importance than the relational components. CONCLUSION: Dignity in care is a concept with multiple meanings. Older people and their relatives focus upon the importance of providing physical care when describing what this means to them. Our participants focussed upon the relational aspects of care delivery rather than care itself. Proactive measures are therefore required to ensure that the physical aspects of care are met for all older people receiving care in NHS trusts. BioMed Central 2013-03-22 /pmc/articles/PMC3614439/ /pubmed/23517491 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2318-13-28 Text en Copyright © 2013 Cairns 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 Cairns, Deborah Williams, Veronika Victor, Christina Richards, Sally Le May, Andreé Martin, Wendy Oliver, David The meaning and importance of dignified care: findings from a survey of health and social care professionals |
title | The meaning and importance of dignified care: findings from a survey of health and social care professionals |
title_full | The meaning and importance of dignified care: findings from a survey of health and social care professionals |
title_fullStr | The meaning and importance of dignified care: findings from a survey of health and social care professionals |
title_full_unstemmed | The meaning and importance of dignified care: findings from a survey of health and social care professionals |
title_short | The meaning and importance of dignified care: findings from a survey of health and social care professionals |
title_sort | meaning and importance of dignified care: findings from a survey of health and social care professionals |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3614439/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23517491 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2318-13-28 |
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