Exploring Staff Perspectives About Interpersonal Relationships Among Persons in Assisted Living Facilities in Franklin County, Ohio: A Pilot Study
Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: As the number of older adults in the United States increases, there will be more and more individuals with functional limitations that requiring long-term care support and services.Understanding how to deliver services that support older persons' health and well-being, including intimate and sexual expression, is important to providing a high quality of care.Facilities that provide assisted living services are one of the largest service settings in aging person care systems.Ten staff members from four assisted living facilities in Franklin County, Ohio were interviewed for approximately 60 minutes each to learn about their experiences with resident intimate and sexual expression and the related policy-making process in their facility.Naturalistic inquiry methods informed the process of data collection that resulted in the following themes: informal policy, reliance on events, pre-and post-event climates.Overall, results indicate that facilities frequently avoid the development of facility-level policy to address resident intimacy and sexuality favoring a case-by-case evaluation that often lacks standardized evaluation tools.Perceptions of the aging process are influenced by the larger negative societal views of the aging process.There are substantial needs for comprehensive training to empower iii staff to make consistent, wellness-aimed decisions for residents.Practice, education, policy, and research implications are proposed.
Author: James R. Carter
Institution: The Ohio State University
Language: English
Subfield: Geriatrics and Gerontology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2400569004