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Chapter 5 Findings
However, more participants described families not taking residents out:
“I think her family, maybe her children have a lot do with it. I think
she feels a burden on them if she asks them for a day out.....you
know she’d love a day out.”
(S02)
“She was quite upset this morning because her family didn’t take
her out for the confirmation. She could go out for an hour or two
but she never gets out really. They meet her here, all the family, but
she’s quite upset about that.”
(S08)
Staff participants described their reliance on family members to help
them plan the resident’s care according to their wishes and their past
lives:
“That’s one of the reasons why it would be hard to do that history
with the fact that they don’t come to visit, the relatives.”
(H01)
“Oh, definitely, and getting to know their background. Rarely I find
would I have time to sit and look at the chart and read their history,
just when you get on, and it’s nobody’s fault you’re just going all
the time but I happened to meet his wife and she was showing me
photographs and it’s then that I got that little bit of history.”
(S11)
“Getting to know their families and communicating with their
families and listening to the families and the resident as regards
what their pattern was at home and why they shouldn’t do in here
what they did at home in as far as is reasonably practical.”
(S14)
Staff spoke about their person-to-person communication and how it is key to
getting to know the resident. Staff talked about how they get to know who the
residents are and about how this is difficult to do if they can’t tell you themselves
or have no relatives or have little family involvement. However, a lack of
structured and negotiated care planning was evident in the observations. The
continuity of staff was revealed as being essential in this process of getting to
know residents and in person-to-person interaction and communication.
Staff participants described the difficulty of getting to know the resident when
they know very little about their past: