Sjuksköterskors erfarenheter av att hantera autonomi hos personer med demenssjukdom : En litteraturstudie

Sammanfattning

Background: Living with dementia can affect a person's ability to exercise autonomy and can cause limitations such as making decisions. Despite this, autonomy is part of human rights and should never end. The nurse's task is to help the person maintain their autonomy for as long as possible. Aim: The aim is to describe nurses' experiences of managing autonomy in people with dementia. Method: Literature study inspired by Evans (2002) analysis method of twelve qualitative articles. Results: What emerged from the analysis were two themes with five more sub-themes. The first theme describes the nurse's experiences of managing autonomy with three associated sub-themes: utilizing the person's own resources, creating a relationship and taking on a protective role for the person's autonomy. The second theme describes the nurse's challenges to maintaining autonomy and is called breaking autonomy with two associated sub-themes: experiencing difficulty in reaching the person with dementia and experiencing ethical dilemmas. Conclusion: Maintaining autonomy in a person with dementia proved to be a complex task. Nurses need to develop greater knowledge in caring for people with dementia in order to be able to identify needs at an early stage and prevent abusive treatments. Nurses should take into account that there is a person behind the dementia and that needs and desires are still just as important to meet. Keywords: relative, dementia, ethical dilemmas, literature study, nurse, relationship.