Article of Interest: The meaning and importance of dignified care: findings from a survey of health and social care professionals

From the latest BMC Geriatrics comes a new article based on a recent survey discussing the meaning and importance of dignified care.   The survey asked health care professionals in the UK about the recognition and practice of dignified care for older people.  The article includes the methods of the survey, results and a discussion.  

A link to the provisional PDF can be found here:: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2318/13/28/abstract

The full abstract of the article can be found below.


Background

There are well established national and local policies championing the need to provide dignity in care for older people. We have evidence as to what older people and their relatives understand by the term 'dignified care' but less insight into the perspectives of staff regarding their understanding of this key policy objective.

Methods

A survey of health and social care professionals across four NHS Trusts in England to investigate how dignified care for older people is understood and delivered. We received 192 questionnaires of the 650 distributed.

Results

Health and social care professionals described the meaning of dignified care in terms of their relationships with patients: 'respect' (47%), 'being treated as an individual' (40%), 'being involved in decision making' (26%) and 'privacy' (24%). 'Being treated as an individual' and 'maintaining privacy' were ranked as the most important components of dignified care. Physical caring tasks such as 'helping with washing, dressing and feeding' were rarely described as being part of dignified care and attributed much less importance than the relational components.

Conclusion

Dignity in care is a concept with multiple meanings. Older people and their relatives focus upon the importance of providing physical care when describing what this means to them. Our participants focussed upon the relational aspects of care delivery rather than care itself. Proactive measures are therefore required to ensure that the physical aspects of care are met for all older people receiving care in NHS trusts.