ABSTRACT
Culture might offer significant insights into the circumstances under which mistreatment occurs. Our aim with this study was to understand and explore institutional mistreatment from a care culture perspective. We used a case study with a triangulating methodology. It involved 12 individual interviews, one focus group interview with four people, a 2-day field study, and a document study. The case was a mistreatment situation that had occurred in municipal care, in which residents had been locked in their rooms at night. Two different care cultures were identified that could give a richer contextual understanding of the motives behind the institutional mistreatment. The service culture was need-oriented and emphasized freedom in care provision. The motherhood culture was characterized by protection and safeguarding of the vulnerable residents. Both cultures showed traces of caring values, but when important caring values were absent, this created a seedbed for mistreatment.
Subject(s)
Caregivers/ethics , Child Development Disorders, Pervasive/therapy , Ethics, Institutional , Intellectual Disability/therapy , Night Care/ethics , Patient Isolation/ethics , Residential Facilities/ethics , Adult , Child Development Disorders, Pervasive/psychology , Focus Groups , Humans , Intellectual Disability/psychology , Interview, Psychological , Patient Satisfaction , Quality of Health Care/ethics , SwedenABSTRACT
The aim of this study was to elucidate municipal night registered nurses' (RNs) experiences of the meaning of caring in nursing. The research context involved all night duty RNs working in municipal care of older people in a medium-sized municipality located in central Sweden. The meaning of caring in nursing was experienced as: caring for by advocacy, superior responsibility in caring, and consultative nursing service. The municipal night RNs' experience of caring is interpreted as meanings in paradoxes: 'being close at distance', the condition of 'being responsible with insignificant control', and 'being interdependently independent'. The RNs' experience of the meaning of caring involves focusing on the care recipient by advocating their perspectives. The meaning of caring in this context is an endeavour to grasp an overall caring responsibility by responding to vocational and personal demands regarding the issue of being a RN, in guaranteeing ethical, qualitative and competent care for older people.
