AN ETHNOGRAPHY: THE INSTITUTIONAL RESPITE EXPERIENCE.
Contributors: University of California, Los Angeles.
Published: 1994
Number of pages: 213
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: This study is a descriptive ethnography of the institutional respite experience. The specific aim is to describe the institutional respite experience within a social and cultural context as perceived by all participants. Data were collected over one year (September 1992-September 1993). The institutional respite care facility was a twenty-four bed Hospital Based Skilled Nursing Facility (HB-SNF) located in the western United States. A total of thirty subjects (14 caregiving dyads plus 2 care-recipients who did not have family caregivers) were studied.

There were distinguishing characteristics of the nursing practice of HB-SNF staff. These included professional role blurring between RN's and LVN's, perceived stigma as a Skilled Nursing Facility Nurse; their defense against this stigma was their praxis. Several components of their nursing practice reflected unit cultural beliefs and behaviors to include: (1) heavy physical labor as part of nursing practice; (2) continuity and control of patient care; and (3) minimizing social distance in patient relationships as reflected in the concepts of inclusion and intimacy. The nursing staff identified with the caregivers of respite care patients because of the similarity in the instrumental and affective components of the care that staff and caregivers deliver. This mirroring of care engenders a responsiveness in the nursing staff to the care responsibilities and problems encountered in delivering care regardless of setting.

Based on this study, a structural model was proposed which incorporates respite care as a category within a broader concept termed "interim care". This model was derived from the actual usage patterns of the caregiver/care-recipient dyad. This model produces three categories of interim care: (1) respite; (2) caregiver surgery/illness; and (3) no available caregiver. The experience of interim care is differentiated into three phases: antecedent phase, institutional phase, and post interim care phase. Each of these phases have specific components which define the phase, and subsequent experience.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-08, Section: B, page: 3241.

Thesis (D.N.SC.)--UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES, 1994.

School code: 0031.