Difficulty of visiting nurse who responds to inappropriate nursing care by carer to home mentally handicapped

Abstract

In this study, we aimed to elucidate the types of difficulties faced by home-visit nurses in caring for home-care patients with mental disabilities in intervening in case of inappropriate care of home-care patients, but which are not classified as abuse. An open-ended questionnaire survey was conducted on home-visit nurses at member home-visit nursing stations of the National Association for Home-visit Nursing Care. We performed a qualitative regression analysis on the responses from 136 nurses and identified the following difficulties experienced by nurses when they recognized abuse: “Difficulties to surfacing problem facts” and “Difficulties in intervening with the abuser and the abuse victim at the same time.” They visited homes while recognizing a growing “Empathy with the abuser” because they had built a relationship with the family and experienced “Hesitation in making the intervention” and “Dilemmas due to difficulties in not being able to reach a common multi-professional understanding.” The results suggested the need for an educational system to reinforce an objective judgment and collaboration, which are essential for intervening in case of gray-area abuse and an improvement of the environment to reduce the nurses’ psychological stress.