Observing Successful Care Homes

The public media and studies in Finland have recently revealed serious problems in residential care. According to them, the every day life is often very routine and inflexible and lacks stimulation. Positive activities can... [ view full abstract ]

The public media and studies in Finland have recently revealed serious problems in residential care. According to them, the every day life is often very routine and inflexible and lacks stimulation. Positive activities can be so few, that they are only “like colour spots in the dead sea”, as anthropologist Erving Goffman argued. There is sufficient data about poor care, but not much about good. That´s why this research seeks to address question: what kind of place seems to be a successful care home ? In my presentation I will analyze and evaluate my ethnographic field work in those Finnish care homes that are considered to be successful.
Previous studies have noted, that studying frail elderly is a relatively challenging task with traditional interviews. The major problem has been how to give “voice” to the frail residents living in care homes. Fore that reason I came up with the conclusion to use alternative methods like observation and Photo Elicitation. The latter contains photos and videos and interviews based on them.
According the results, a good, successful care home offers such concrete things as enough staff, possibility to have life outside the nursing home and visitors passing at any time, and cozy furnishing. Still, non-material factors seem to be more important than the material. Many of those non-material things together can be defined as “authenticity”.
As conclusion it seems, that successfull care home is neither overwhelming nor expensive for care partners. The factors described above may be crucial in terms of how successfully nursing home works as a transitional phase towards the end of life. To see happy and safe life endings can bring hope and empower for the younger generations.
Keywords: Ethnography. Photo elicitation. Care Home.