Caring and noncaring behaviors in the long term care setting.

Abstract

Long-term care in Portugal represents a comprehensive group of care for people who need help from others for long periods of time, especially elderly. Over the last decades, the importance of supporting elderly dependents has been reinforced by policy makers, with an increase of the responses to this population and an improvement of services provided. The greater attention given by whole Europe to long-term care has made possible to recognize the specificity of these contexts, which require specific knowledge and skills shaped by caring. A central concept in many relationships, understood as a way of being, or a way of acting, caring and care are necessary related to the vulnerability of the human being, more pronounced when he becomes old. This paper aimes to identify caring and noncaring behaviors in long-term care, contexts to understand how this concept is transposed (or not) to care for the elderly and to relate the perceived caring practices and expressed with resources and contexts. This exploratory, interpretive and mixed design study included 113 elderly and 65 nurses from 10 long-term care settings that included nursing homes and integrated responses in the Rede Nacional de Cuidados Continuados Integrados located in 7 localities of the district of Castelo Branco. The information was obtained through the Caring Behaviors Inventory (portuguese version) and semi-structured interviews. The analysis and interpretation of the information allowed to conclude that caring behaviors are present in the relationship between elderly and nurses and are perceived and defined as such. However, in some contexts, the elderly identified behaviors and attitudes consistent with noncaring where the time element emerged as structuring of these perceptions.

Keywords

• idosos
• assistência de longa duração
• cuidar
• enfermagem