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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Right place - wrong person
— dignity in the acute care of older people | | Author(s) | Win Tadd, Alex Hillman, Sian Calnan |
| Journal title | Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, vol 12, issue 1, March 2012 |
| Pages | pp 33-43 |
| Source | DOI: 10.5042/qiaoa.2011.0143 http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?article... |
| Keywords | Patients ; Medical care ; Management [care] ; Attitude ; Medical workers ; Qualitative Studies. |
| Annotation | This ethnographic study explores the experience of dignity in the acute care of older people in four acute hospital trusts, and the prevalent view that acute care is not the right place for older people. There has been a failure to acknowledge that the largest group of users of acute care services are the very old, the frail and the dependent; and that such environments are not friendly to older people generally, and are especially hostile to those with cognitive impairments. Added to this, the acute hospital trust is a culture that is risk averse and defensive, where care is undervalued, and where professional accountability and discretion are replaced by standardised checklists, pathways and audits, which cultivate the attitude that if an aspect of care can't be measured it doesn't matter. Overall, getting the job done appears to matter more than how the job is done, so that the focus is primarily on the task rather than seeing the person. This article describes how the failure of acute trusts to respond to the needs of the majority of their users - older people - results in the failure to provide dignified care, and the impact of this on both the quality of care and patient outcomes. (OFFPRINT) (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-121211003 A |
| Classmark | LF: LK: QA: DP: QT: 3DP * |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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