Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society (NVS), Division of Occupational Therapy, Karolinska Institutet, Huddinge, Sweden.
Aging Ment Health. 2021 Sep;25(9):1701-1708. doi: 10.1080/13607863.2020.1758914. Epub 2020 Apr 25.
Many persons with dementia live at home with support from home care services. Despite this, research is scarce concerning how risks in daily life among persons with dementia are perceived and handled by home care staff. This study aimed to explore how home care staff identify risks in the everyday lives of persons with dementia, and to inquire into how they reasoned about their own actions related to those risks.
A qualitative approach was applied for the study. Both individual interviews and focus groups were conducted with home care staff ( = 23). Data was analysed using a constant comparative method.
Identifying, reasoning and acting upon risks in the everyday lives of persons with dementia were related to several dilemmas for the home care staff. These dilemmas are described and elaborated on in three categories: 1) Strategies for tracking risks, 2) Dilemmas concerning where to draw the line and deciding when to act, and 3) Dilemmas when acting on risks.
The study provides new knowledge about the dilemmas that staff in home care services may face and how they reason about managing risks in the homes of persons with dementia. The study shows that the staff had to weigh risk and safety against the autonomy of persons with dementia. Based on these findings, we want to highlight the importance of competence among home care staff and the organizational conditions that must exist in order to manage the challenges of risky situations.
许多痴呆症患者在家中接受家庭护理服务的支持下生活。尽管如此，关于痴呆症患者日常生活中的风险如何被家庭护理人员感知和处理的研究仍然很少。本研究旨在探讨家庭护理人员如何识别痴呆症患者日常生活中的风险，并探讨他们如何推理与这些风险相关的自身行为。
本研究采用定性方法。对家庭护理人员（共 23 人）进行了个人访谈和焦点小组访谈。使用恒定性比较方法分析数据。
识别、推理和应对痴呆症患者日常生活中的风险与家庭护理人员面临的几个困境有关。这些困境在三个类别中进行了描述和阐述：1）跟踪风险的策略，2）确定界限和决定何时采取行动的困境，3）采取行动时的困境。
该研究提供了有关家庭护理服务人员可能面临的困境以及他们如何推理管理痴呆症患者家中风险的新知识。研究表明，工作人员必须权衡风险和安全与痴呆症患者的自主权。基于这些发现，我们想强调家庭护理人员的能力以及必须存在的组织条件的重要性，以便管理风险情况的挑战。
