Configurations of institutionalized geriatric care, a study from the perspectives of Nursing students

Abstract

Introduction: It is a challenge to maintain humanism as the axis of care, research indicates that nursing staff are often overwhelmed by the demands of care and that this leads to depersonalization and dehumanization, mainly when caring for people in situations of total dependency, it is a phenomenon that has been little documented in the case of the students. Objective: To understand the configuration acquired in terms of humanism, geriatric care provided to elderly people with total dependency, within a public nursing home, from the perspectives of Nursing students in social service. Methodology: In 2021, a qualitative study was carried out with a focus on grounded theory, in which 19 students of the last degree of the bachelor’s degree in Nursing who performed social service in a nursing home were interviewed based on the criterion of theoretical saturation. The interviews were analyzed based on the Strauss and Corbin proposal and the categories were triangulated with the field diary records. Results: The central category that emerged was "non-humanistic care" since it was identified that the organization and implementation of care are due more to administrative and protocolized issues from a biomedical perspective, than to the recognition of the uniqueness of people and their needs from a holistic perspective and the prioritization they make based on their own values. Conclusions: There is no recognition of the autonomy of the elderly; there is an absence of psychosocial skills in professionals; the institutional culture does not prioritize humanized care; individual, professional and institutional conditions are detrimental to the humanized care given to people living in asylum.