Nursing home caregivers’ explanations for and coping strategies with residents’ aggression: a qualitative study

Adelheid Zeller, Theo Dassen, Gerjo Kok, Ian Needham and Ruud JG Halfens

Journal of Clinical Nursing, 2011, vol. 20, issue 17‐18, 2469-2478

Abstract: Aims and objectives. This study explored caregivers’ perspectives regarding the conditions and situations of resident aggression and practical strategies caregivers use to deal with aggression. Background. Working in a nursing home is associated with a high risk to experience aggression from residents or patients. Despite existing recommendations for dealing with aggression there is a lack of information about caregivers’ ways of dealing with it in practice. Design. A qualitative study with focus group method was conducted. Method. Five focus group interviews, with a total of 30 participants, from nursing homes in Switzerland were undertaken employing a semi‐structured interview guideline. For analysing the data, qualitative content analysis was employed. Results. Analysis of the data produced three themes with additional sub‐themes. One main theme concerns the explanations of the caregivers in regard to the occurrence of aggressive behaviour. This theme is subdivided into two areas, the contributory resident related factors and the caregiver related factors. The measures for handling aggressive behaviour are illustrated in the second theme ‘dealing with residents’. The third theme refers to the strategies of the caregivers when confronted with aggressive behaviour –‘self‐protection’ and ‘coping with the situation’. Conclusion. Caregivers use a broad spectrum of interventions for reducing aggression, some of which are recommended by guidelines but often ignore the link between aggressive behaviour and physiological issues like pain or elimination. The caregivers only very rarely linked their practical knowledge about aggressive behaviour with theoretical knowledge. Relevance to clinical practice. The results give insight into the caregivers’ perspectives on factors leading to aggression and their coping strategies. Caregivers are informed about relevant reasons for aggressive behaviour and its management, but do not apply a systematic approach. Furthermore, the anxiety of caregivers involved in aggression incidents is an under examined area.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2702.2011.03722.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:jocnur:v:20:y:2011:i:17-18:p:2469-2478

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Clinical Nursing from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().