The content of morning time conversations between nursing home staff and residents

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to investigate what nursing home staff and residents converse about when they first meet each other in the morning and to investigate who starts the conversation. It is a pilot project about communication in a nursing home in Sweden and a basis for a practice development programme. Studies in Sweden have shown that nurse assistants working in care of the older people felt they had too little training in how to communicate. Communicative behaviour influences patients, but little is known about the content of morning time communication in nursing homes. Non-participant observation of 18 staff was carried out using an observation schema. Content analysis was performed. The findings were that it was the staff who initiated conversation and chose the content of conversation. The most common topic in morning time conversation was residents' health and sickness. Staff in nursing homes, both nurses and nurse assistants need to reflect on their interaction with residents and be conscious of their important role because they create the climate on the ward through conversation. Further studies are needed in order to explore residents' opinions of what the content of a good communication could be and also to find out how nurses and other staff members' communication with residents could be improved. Relevance to clinical practice. Staff need more training and knowledge about how to communicate with older people.