Registered Nurses' and nurse assistants' responses to older persons' expressions of emotional needs in home care

Aim: This study aims to explore nurse assistants' and Registered Nurses' responses to older persons' expressions of emotional needs during home care visits.

Background: Communication is a central aspect of care. Older persons might express different emotions and needs during home care visits and such expressions can be challenging to respond to. Little is known about communication in home care or nursing staff responses to older persons' expressed emotional needs.

Design: Descriptive, cross-sectional design on nursing staff responses to older persons' negative emotions in home care.

Methods: Collected data consisted of audio recordings of home care visits between older persons and nursing staff. Data were collected between August 2014-November 2015. The nursing staff responses to older persons' negative emotions in the communication were analysed with the Verona Coding Definitions of Emotional Sequences (VR-CoDES).

Results: The nursing staff most often give non-explicit responses, providing space for further disclosure of older persons' expressed negative emotions. Such responses were more frequent if the nursing staff had elicited the older persons' expressions of a negative emotion than if such expressions were elicited by the older persons themselves. Most frequent types of responses were backchannel, active invitation or information advice.

Conclusion: The nursing staff responses were mainly non-explicit responses providing space for older persons to tell more about their experiences. Such responses can be discussed in terms of person-centred communication and is important for the comfort of emotional concerns.