Changing caring behaviours in rehabilitation after a hip fracture – A tool for empowerment?

Abstract

Different rehabilitation programs after surgery have been presented to improve the outcome for patients with a hip fracture. Empowerment has been suggested as useful, but requires a change in the caring behaviours of health professionals. The aim with this study was to evaluate if training and supervision of the nursing staff could alter caring behaviours. A case-control study of nursing staff treating hip fracture patients was performed at a hospital with two sites. Training and supervision was given to the nursing staff at the intervention site. The intervention focused on creating positive care interaction by using eight guidelines. The evaluation was performed with recordings of a constructed caring situation before training, and observations of care situations at the ward before and after intervention. The results showed no differences at baseline between the two sites in the caring behaviours. After intervention, significant effects of caring behaviours were seen in seven out of eight guidelines, the effect sizes ranged from medium to large. The findings indicate that the nursing staff can change caring behaviours and facilitate the empowerment of patients with a hip fracture.

Keywords:

• Empowerment
• caring behaviour
• training
• supervision
• observations
• hip fracture

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the research nurses, Åsa Norling and Luigi Belcastro, their assistant Angela la Terra, and the occupational therapist Iwona Olsson, for their work with the data collection. Others we gratefully acknowledge are the patients and nursing staff of the sites studied, as well as Beata Jablonska, Cecilia Moberg, Nelleke Heinemans and Cecilia Sjölander, for their work with the observations.

Notes

1. Further details on the content would be available upon request from the first author.