The complexity of everyday ethics in home health care: an analysis of social workers' decisions regarding frail elders' autonomy.

Little attention has been given to the ethical dimensions of social work practice in the growing field of home health care. This descriptive, exploratory study examined the influence of frail elders' cognitive status, safety, and caregiver burden on social workers' support for autonomy. The major findings of this study were that all three factors were significantly related to support for autonomy. Especially important was the emergence of a ranking of the relative importance of these three factors in social workers' decision making: the first factor considered was cognitive status, the second was safety, and the third was caregiver burden.