Therapeutic Nursing and the Hospitalised Elderly

The purposes of this doctoral study of geriatric nursing is to explain why a minority of nurses give patient-centred care while the majority were content to provide care that is routine-orientated and depersonalized. The influence of the medical model was not considered to be solely responsible for the nursing profession's apparent inability to ensure a better quality of care. Rather, the proposition was that the nursing profession had not clarified its position in relation to the care of the elderly and, in consequence, could offer little guidance and direction to those who worked in geriatric wards. This was the result of nursing's failure to accept care as its central function: to identify the main components of caring for the hospitalized elderly and to develop a geriatric nursing model to organize control and direct nursing practice. The author concluded that ward sisters who were aware of their therapeutic function were found to organize their work and approach patient care in a manner similar to that of the activities outlined in a tested theoretical framework.