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Ingalill Rahm Hallberg

Ingalill Rahm Hallberg

Professor emerita

Ingalill Rahm Hallberg

Nurses´ experiences of strain and their reactions in the care of severely demented patients.

Author

  • Ingalill Rahm Hallberg
  • Astrid Norberg

Summary, in English

All nurses (N = 132) on the wards specializing in the care of the demented within a municipality were given two scales to assess their view of common patient actions and how easy they thought those actions were to deal with in the care situation, and to assess their emotional reactions during the provision of care. Also the Maslach burnout Inventory (MBI) and the Work Related Strain Inventory (WRSI) were used to test concurrent validity. Based on principal component analysis, the nurses' view of patient actions resulted in being agitated, unruly, living empty lives, being peaceful, dependent, non-responsive and cooperative, and the nurses' view of difficulties in dealing with patient actions revealed ability to manage deprivation, agitation, desertedness, wilfulness, peacefulness and cooperation. A three-factor solution was chosen for the emotional reactions: feelings of devotion - rejection, association - dissociation and usefulness - uselessness. Agitated and dependent patient actions were found to be most common while agitation and desertedness were regarded as most difficult. Patient seen as agitated and living empty lives related to the provision of care being difficult while dependence related to care as being easy to provide. Thus the findings gave further support to the belief that viewing the patient's life as meaningful as well as being able to develop a cooperative nurse-patient relationship is crucial for nurses' experience of strain. Thus support should be directed towards achieving this kind of relationship.

Department/s

  • Department of Health Sciences

Publishing year

1995

Language

English

Pages

757-766

Publication/Series

International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry

Volume

10

Issue

9

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Topic

  • Nursing

Keywords

  • dementia care
  • nurses
  • strain feelings
  • measures
  • difficult behaviour
  • patient actions

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1099-1166