The caregivers’ possibilities of providing ethically good care for older people – a study on caregivers’ ethical approach

Abstract

In the care of older people, unexpected and unpredictable situations often occur, which sometimes involve challenging ethical decision-making. This study starts off from an ethical perspective with caritative caring as the theoretical framework. The aim of this descriptive study is to describe what possibilities care givers regard themselves to have to provide good care based on ethical values in the daily care of older persons. A total of 105 (95%) care givers answered the questionnaire. The study was conducted in a municipality in the Western part of Finland during the spring of 2007. The result shows that good care based on ethical values cannot always be guaranteed in the care of older person. There are possibilities to provide the older person with individual, dignified and safe care, and to establish a caring communion and closeness in care, but without positioning these results in relation to an ethical discussion, we cannot state that the care is good enough.