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“Sometimes I’ve gone home feeling that my voice hasn’t been heard”: a focus group study exploring the views and experiences of health care assistants when caring for dying residents

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Palliative Care, August 2016
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113 Mendeley
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Title
“Sometimes I’ve gone home feeling that my voice hasn’t been heard”: a focus group study exploring the views and experiences of health care assistants when caring for dying residents
Published in
BMC Palliative Care, August 2016
DOI 10.1186/s12904-016-0150-3
Pubmed ID
Authors

Susan Fryer, Gary Bellamy, Tessa Morgan, Merryn Gott

Abstract

In most developed countries, Health Care Assistants comprise a significant, and growing, proportion of the residential aged care workforce. Despite the fact that they provide the majority of direct care for residents, little is known about a key care aspect of their work, namely their experience of caring for dying residents. Twenty-six Health Care Assistants working in aged residential care facilities in Auckland, New Zealand participated in six focus group discussions. Focus groups were designed to explore the experiences of Health Care Assistants caring for imminently dying residents in aged care facilities and to identify barriers and facilitators to their work in this area. The focus groups were digitally recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using a general inductive approach. Participants confirmed that Health Care Assistants provide the majority of hands on care to dying residents and believed they had a valuable role to play at this time due to their unique 'familial' relationship with residents and families. However, it was apparent that a number of barriers existed to them maximising their contribution to supporting dying residents, most notably the lack of value placed on their knowledge and experience by other members of the multidisciplinary team. Whilst a need for additional palliative and end of life care education was identified, a preference was identified for hands on education delivered by peers, rather than the didactic education they currently receive. Given ageing populations internationally coupled with a constrained health budget, the role of Health Care Assistants in most developed countries is likely to become even more significant in the short to medium term. This study makes a unique contribution to the international literature by identifying the barriers to caring for dying residents experienced by this valuable sector of the aged care workforce. These data have the potential to inform new, innovative, interventions to address the urgent need identified to improve palliative and end of life care management in aged care internationally.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 6 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 113 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 1 <1%
Unknown 112 99%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 17 15%
Student > Master 16 14%
Student > Bachelor 13 12%
Researcher 11 10%
Student > Doctoral Student 8 7%
Other 17 15%
Unknown 31 27%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Nursing and Health Professions 41 36%
Medicine and Dentistry 17 15%
Social Sciences 8 7%
Psychology 6 5%
Business, Management and Accounting 3 3%
Other 6 5%
Unknown 32 28%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 19 October 2018.
All research outputs
#8,372,602
of 25,014,758 outputs
Outputs from BMC Palliative Care
#898
of 1,449 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#124,470
of 351,740 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Palliative Care
#21
of 28 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,014,758 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 43rd percentile – i.e., 43% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,449 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 9.2. This one is in the 36th percentile – i.e., 36% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 351,740 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 49th percentile – i.e., 49% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 28 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 28th percentile – i.e., 28% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.