Successful ability to stay at home - an interview study exploring multiple diagnosed older persons and their relatives' experiences.

BACKGROUND

Society places increased demands on regions and municipalities to jointly carry out activities for multi-diagnosed older persons with extensive coordination needs. Interprofessional collaboration is reported as an important success factor for the overall health care of this group of patients. This project focuses on older persons with multiple diagnoses and their relatives' own experiences of what is most important for safety and security in their homes. The aim of the study was: to illuminate the meaning of success for the ability to stay at home as experienced by older persons with multiple diagnoses and their relatives.

METHODS

The project had a descriptive explorative design with a phenomenological hermeneutic approach based on analysis of 14 in-depth interviews with older people and their relatives.

FINDINGS

Own resources were identified such as belief in the future, spiritual belief, social network, having loved ones and pets. Technical aids were seen as helpful resources, working as indoor and outdoor security safeguards. These resources included having good telephone contact with social and professional networks as well as other forms of personal equipment such as a personal alarm. The professional network was a resource, acting as support when the patient's own abilities were not sufficient. Finally, having personnel who had the time and interest to listen was seen as crucial to experience safety.

CONCLUSIONS

The main reason for being able to continue homecare was the person's self-care system, their personal, social, and technical resources. Professional care development should anchor team work to the patient's own system of self and informal care.