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.
