The health care requirements of older people admitted to acute hospitals and their need for nursing care have been identified in current literature as problematic. Hospital organisations which are medically oriented and more focused on implementing programs directed by economics, efficiency and effectiveness may be unsupportive of nursing practices based on a professional value system. There is a need, therefore, to examine how health care structures that tend to promote cost containment and a technical imperative, impact on the professional capability of nurses to provide the standard of care required by acutely ill older hospitalised patients. The collected data, analysed thematically, indicates that the nurses were knowledgeable and potentially competent in providing the standard of technical and functional care required by older adults in hospital. However, although nurses articulated that they wanted to provide the quality of care needed by acutely ill older patients, they nevertheless admitted they were optionalising this care because of constraints in the health care system.While the nurses’ constructions revealed they believed technical tasks took up most of their time during shifts, it is evident during the observations that this was not the case. Through the use of Giddens’s (1984) Structuration Theory, a very different picture began to unfold about the incongruence about was said, and what was actually done. The significance of this study is that the incongruence found between the nurses’ knowledge and their actions has been revealed. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/181821 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Kilstoff, Kathleen, University of Western Sydney, College of Health and Science, School of Nursing |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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