BACKGROUND: Worldwide, older persons lack access to palliative care. In Sweden, many older persons die in nursing homes where care is provided foremost by assistant nurses. Due to a lack of beds, admission is seldom granted until the older persons have complex care needs and are already in a palliative phase when they move in.

OBJECTIVE: To describe assistant nurses' perspectives of providing care to older persons at the end of life in a nursing home.

RESEARCH DESIGN: Data were collected in semi-structured individual interviews and analyzed with inductive qualitative content analysis. Participants and research context: Seven assistant nurses from a nursing home in Sweden were randomly selected. Ethical consideration: The research was approved by the local ethics committee.

RESULTS: Three main categories emerged; "Death a natural part of life"; "The older person's well-being"; and "Care in the moment of death"; and seven sub-categories. The assistant nurses described themselves as knowing the older persons well enough to provide good end-of-life care. This was achieved by making small-talk while providing daily care. Relying on experience-based knowledge, they strove to provide end-of-life care built upon respect and engagement with the ambition to strengthen older persons' dignity, for example, by lowering the tempo of care at the end of life, in spite of organizational restrictions.

DISCUSSION: The assistant nurses offered attentive end-of-life care, focusing upon bodily care. The existential needs of the older persons were not foregrounded.

CONCLUSION: To develop their work, and to promote an ethical foundation for such care, assistant nurses might need support and education to be able to offer a care more in line with the aims of palliative care. Furthermore, the organization of care needs to promote, not impede, the realization of this development.

Most older persons moving to a nursing home need to receive assisted bodily care, which means being in a position of vulnerability. However, few studies have explicitly focused on the meanings of receiving assisted bodily care from the older persons' perspective. This study aimed to elucidate meanings of receiving assisted bodily care, as narrated by older persons living in a nursing home. Twelve men and women, aged 80 or older, living in a Swedish nursing home, participated in the study. Data were generated by narrative interviews and analysed with a phenomenological-hermeneutical method. The regional ethics committee approved the study. In the analysis, one main theme emerged: 'Assenting to exposedness'. This theme comprised five themes, 'To have hope in hopelessness', 'To relinquish one's body into others' hands', 'To be between power and powerlessness', 'To oscillate between one's own responsibility and demands', 'To be in an ongoing interaction', and ten subthemes. In conclusion, receiving assisted bodily care means to be exposed, but not passively. Rather, it means to be self-determinant for as long as possible, to perceive the body as lived. When the body must be relinquished to others, it might be objectified, leading to care-suffering. To avoid this, the older persons use a certain competence, acquired through life, to decide when to take action or when to assent. However, this is but one of the several possible interpretations, which may be considered a limitation.

Background: Many frail older persons who die in Swedish nursing homes need assisted bodily care. They must surrender their bodies to the authority of assistant nurses, which may affect their autonomy, and dignity of identity. While assistant nurses claim to support older persons’ wishes, older persons claim having exposedness to assistant nurses’ routines. The provider-receiverin congruence revealed here warrants investigation.

Aim: To describe the elements of assisted bodily care, as performed in a nursing home.

Research design: Data were collected through thirty-nine observations of assisted bodily care, analyzed with qualitative content analysis.

Participants and research context: Seventeen older persons and twenty-two assistant nurses from a Swedish nursing home.

Ethical considerations: The research was conducted in line with the Declaration of Helsinki,further approved by the regional ethics committee.

Findings: Findings show, that assisted bodily care consists of assistant nurses’ practical work, performed at a high tempo. Still, assistant nurses attempt to adapt this work to older persons’wishes for self-determination, taking into account their day-to-day state of health. In spite of time pressure and occasional interruptions, there is room for consideration and affection in assisted bodily care.

Discussion: Assistant nurses try to promote older persons’ dignity of identity, but sometimes fail, possibly due to lack of time. On the contrary, they seem to know older persons well enough to adapt assisted bodily care according to their preferences and support self-determination. This indicates that openness to older persons’ life-worlds may be more important than the amount of time available.

Conclusions: Nursing home contexts might benefit from adopting a person-centered palliative care perspective, highlighting the value of relationships and shared decision-making. If so, older persons and assisted nurses could prepare agreement on practices and goals in assisted bodily care beforehand. Such routines may be time-saving and beneficial to all.

AIM: The aim of this study was to explore family members' perceptions of assisted bodily care in a nursing home.

BACKGROUND: Many older people living in nursing homes need assisted bodily care, provided by assistant nurses. This means exposedness, as the assistance is often provided under stress, but also brings pleasure. Family members, who may wish to and often benefit from continuing to provide assisted bodily care, are perceived as visitors and are expected to relinquish the assisted bodily care to the assistant nurses.

DESIGN: This study has a qualitative design with a phenomenographic approach.

METHODS: Data were collected through semi-structured interviews (n = 13) with family members of older people who were aged > 80, permanently living in a nursing home, suffering from multimorbidity, and in daily need of assisted bodily care. The data were analysed using a phenomenographic method.

RESULTS: Three categories of description presenting an increasing complexity were identified. The family members perceived that assisted bodily care is built upon a respect for the older person's self-determination, practically supported by assistant nurses, and complemented by family members.

CONCLUSIONS: In the family members' perceptions, assisted bodily care signifies ambiguity, as they find themselves balancing between the older persons' need for self-determination and need for help, and, further, between their trust in the assistant nurses' skills and their own perceived inadequacies in intimate assisted bodily care.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: Policies that address the family members' role in nursing homes are needed. Furthermore, time for collaboration is needed for assistant nurses to inform and explain care decisions, become aware of the family members' perceptions of their situation and learn from them.