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Chapter 5 Findings
deemed essential if one wishes to work in residential care. Bringing this interest
into the workplace resulted in family and resident satisfaction.
Sub-theme 1c: Person to Person: “They don’t think of me as a person”
This sub-theme is about staff members’ abilities to communicate both verbally
and non-verbally with residents. It is also about being approachable to residents,
families and visitors. Overall it is about how good communication can build
relationships through getting to know the resident. The role of the family was
also discussed and how this contributes to a resident’s autonomy. Staff spoke
about families’ involvement in care and families spoke about how they interact
with staff. The importance of respect between one person and another was
described and resident dignity was considered a priority.
Many staff felt that if they spent time talking and listening to residents that their
colleagues would think they weren’t pulling their weight or “working”. Equally,
while residents spoke about their desire for staff to have more time to talk to
them instead of the quickly captured moments when they were attending to their
care. Interestingly, a few staff members talked about the level of resident
dependency and how it affects communication – they felt that their working day
was less fun when there were fewer residents to interact with. It was observed
that staff spoke to each other largely about “who will we do next” rather than
communicating any formal care planning. Occasionally staff did talk to each
other on a social level but this was often over a resident while attending to their
care and thus missing out on valuable opportunity to interact with the resident. It
was observed that staff really struggled to interact with very dependent and non-
verbal residents.
Some nurse participants felt that talking to residents is important:
“Most important is talking to the residents”
(S01)
and that talking is just as important as any other activity: