The experience of the elderly people who can’t take part in decision-making for their post-hospitalization life

Abstract

  The purpose of this study is to elucidate the experience of elderly people who were not allowed to take part in the decision-making process for their own post-hospitalization life, which resulted in their relocation to a nursing home.

  The participants in this research were three elderly women in hospital “A.” The average age was eighty years old. I conducted unstructured interviews with them six times on average during the period till their discharge. I tape-recorded these interviews with their permission and transcribed the recording for use as data for analysis.

  The analysis revealed the situation where these elderly women were not allowed to take part in the process for deciding the course of their own life after leaving the hospital. They were left out of the process, causing them to have “crisis of loss of individuality,” “suffering from not having their present role,” and “pain of not having stability or a place to be.” It also became clear that the elderly women who were asked to relocate to a nursing home would, after all, accept it only “for the sake of their family” after all.