Ageing in the right place - experiences of daily life leading to a nursing home application.

In Sweden, older adults are encouraged to remain living at their own homes, with support from home-based care and home health nurses. If an older adult don’t want to live at home anymore, he/she has, according to The Social Services Act the right to apply for an accommodation in a nursing home. However, following social policy which encourages ageing in place, the number of nursing homes has been reduced in the last decades, which might be the reason for the shortage of nursing homes placements leading to a waiting times ranging from weeks to months. The fact that older adults in Sweden apply to nursing home on a daily basis, is an indication that ageing in place cannot meet the needs of all people in the older population.

The PhD project "Ageing in the right place - experiences of daily life leading to a nursing home application." therefore includes studies that intend to describe the needs that affect the older adults to choose to apply for a nursing home placement. The Phd project will result in a dissertation which aims is to describe and determine which decisive experiences of daily living that makes ageing in place unsatisfactory, and thereby describe what influences older adults to apply to a nursing home.

As growing population of older adults are expected to make higher demands on society when it comes to standard of living, including ageing in their current home. To determine what affects the older adults experiences of ageing in place is therefore important both in the current situation but also for the future, as a growing proportion of Sweden's population grows older and lives longer.

Ongoing research:

Study 1, is an interview study with people waiting for an accommodation at a nursing home with a somatic focus. The purpose of the study was to describe the daily life experiences that influence people who age in place to apply to a nursing home.

Study 2, is a document study to describe activities in daily life that influence older people to apply to nursing home, as documented in nursing home applications for somatic needs, which have been approved based on the Social Services Act.

Study 3, is an interview study aiming to describe experiences of being a relative of a person who applied for a place in a nursing home during the year of 2020.

Study 4, is in planning phase.