Practical Cooperation and Collaboration between Community-based Care Hospital Nurses and Home-Visiting Nurses to Support Elderly People with Dementia Returning Home

Abstract

Elderly people living with dementia often have some other illnesses and lots of them receive home care services. The purpose of this study is to clarify through a qualitative analysis how community-based care hospital nurses and home-visiting nurses collaborate in practicing dementia care and support hospitalized elderly patients returning home.

The first interview was conducted with twenty-one community-based care hospital nurses, and the results suggested that they were struggling with conflicts related to fulfilling their own role and limitations of ward nursing.

Seventeen home-visiting nurses were the participants of the next interview. Two categories of“sharing the specialty of home-visiting care”and“practicing nurse-to-nurse collaboration” and 9 subcategories including“understanding home-visiting care by hospital nurses”were identified. Hospital nurses need to enhance their understanding of home-visiting care and collaborate with other healthcare professions in order to support elderly patients with dementia returning home.

These results indicated that developing and putting into practical use since early phases after hospitalization a visualized system of nurse-to-nurse collaboration according to process of medical treatment and rehabilitation might be effective to support elderly patients returning their own homes from both the hospital and home care perspectives.