| Revista INFAD 2012 |
ISSN EDICIÓN EN PAPEL: 0214-9877 |
| Nº1, Vol. 3, pp. 347-355 | doi: en trámite |
 Ver PDF |
O cuidado confortador ao idoso crónico hospitalizado
Patricia Pontífice Sousa / Maria Arminda Costa. pp. 347-355
Introduction and aims: The practices of geriatric nursing care should be based on scientific knowledge and justified practices, contributing to the exercise of comfort care. This study aimed to identify the comfort care situations for hospitalised chronic elderly patients.
Methodology: We have carried out an ethnographic study with a qualitative approach. We con-ducted semi-structured interviews and participant observation to patients in order to identify ways and means of comfort.
Results: The sample was composed of 22 elderly, mostly female, aged between 65 and 90 years old. The ways and means of comfort are focused on comfort promoting strategies, conducted by the nurse and recognized by the patients (information; decrease of external environmental stimulus; humour; smile; touch and others), and in particular comfort moments (“afternoon cares”; the family visit; the first contact and the personal hygienic care), that are recognized as foundations of comfort care.
Conclusion: Comfort care assumes itself as a complex process of help, built between the elder-ly and the nurse, in a way that the study reinforces the idea that there is a need for research in dif-ferent contexts, in order to increase knowledge about the best comfort strategies.
Keywords: Chronic Elderly Patient, Comfort Care, Hospitalization
