Home health care nurse interactions with homebound geriatric patients with depression and disability.

Abstract

Building therapeutic nurse-patient relationships is pivotal to the provision of optimum nurse care management for geriatric home health care (HHC) patients. However, little is known about which strategies most effectively treat older adult HHC patients with concomitant depression and disability. This qualitative descriptive study was conducted in two parts to explore the issue further. The first part involved interviews regarding HHC nurse perceptions of geriatric depression and disability care management. The second part, which is the focus of the current analysis, describes HHC nurses' use of care management and therapeutic during home visits. Observation of nurse-patient interactions involved 25 nurses home visits to HHC patients 60 and older who had depression and disability. Drawing on clinical knowledge and interpersonal skills, nurses built relationships and fostered trust. However, despite their disabilities to make these connections, multiple missed opportunities occurred for nurses to engage in more productive interactions. Four training components to support improvement of nurse-patient therapeutic relationships are described and recommended.