Judgment and Support during the Night On-call System to Help Nurses Working in Intensive-care Home for the Elderly

Abstract

  This study focused on the nighttime on-call system of intensive-care home for the elderly and describes in detail the judgments and support of nurses receiving calls from healthcare workers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 6 nurses who had＞ 3 years of working experience in conventional intensive-care homes, and the contents were analyzed qualitatively and descriptively. The following two themes were identified : (i) nurses tended to make judgments and give support to ensure the safety and comfort of the care recipients ; (ii) nurses tended to judge and take action to support healthcare workers. Nurses sought the causes of sickness that were not clearly evident in the sick recipients, determined whether the sick care recipients could be monitored until the following morning, and prioritized their safety in cases where reaching a judgment was difficult. Simultaneously, nurses were careful to ensure a safe working environment for healthcare workers. In particular, nurses provided advice to ensure that healthcare workers could calmly respond and exercised consideration to ensure that they did not face inconvenience in performing their duties. The characteristics of the nurses’ judgment and response were that they made decisions to protect the safety and comfort of the care recipients by relying on information provided via telephone during the night on call and supported healthcare workers who actually took care of the care recipients.