HOME CARE CLIENTS' MEANINGS OF HOME.
Contributors: University of Virginia.
Published: 1989
Number of pages: 347
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Gerontology.; Psychology, Personality.
Description: The purpose of this client-focused study was to target two major factors impacting the delivery of nursing care in the home: the setting for care and client perceptions of the setting for care. The specific research goal was to explore and describe home as it was conceptualized 1986-1988 by nine individuals receiving home health care. These urban elderly clients were chosen as case study respondents because of their recognized and ongoing success as hardy, strong "survivors" in their homes.

While the home has become a major focus of health care provider and consumer interest, its private meanings are relatively uncharted by health care researchers. Because of this, a descriptive method, naturalistic inquiry with illustrative case studies, was chosen. Each case study explored the phenomenon of one client's home as a repository of personal life history. This technique was replicated nine times and all cases cross-analyzed to make explicit basic patterns of meaning which emerged from the data. Client perceptions revealed four major interrelating patterns of comfort, domesticity, nostalgia, and privacy. Elements of love and spirituality also wove sturdy background fabric for clients' meanings of home as a core life concept for positive, health-generating energy. Clients operationalized symbols and images through their individual home spaces, home contents, and home behaviors. Rigor was addressed through multiple sources of evidence, client and key informant validation, peer debriefing, pattern matching, and time series analysis.

The clients' perception of home as a "good" and "beautiful" place led the researcher to investigate esthetics, the discipline of architecture and architect Christopher Alexander's "pattern language", and suggest the beginning of what may be a useful esthetic line of inquiry for home health nursing practice and knowledge development. Viewed through an esthetic lens, client meanings of home appeared to have created a harmony and balance which promoted continuing potential for health for the most part. In effect, home appeared a basic unit of health, a building block for life.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-10, Section: B, page: 4452.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, 1989.

School code: 0246.