Providing residential care to older Australians: Issues for registered nurses

Contemporary nursing in residential aged care facilities poses many challenges. Issues impacting on registered nurses providing care to older Australians living in residential aged care settings are explored and described in this paper. Five broad themes emerged from the analysis of thirty interviews with Registered Nurses, eleven focus groups with participants who worked with registered nurses in the residential aged care facilities selected in the sample, and five nominal groups which consisted of key stakeholders from the aged care industry and professional nursing forums. These themes were: a changing and increasingly complex role; perceptions of the registered nurse in residential aged care and how to deal with them; the need for strategies to work with others; coping with the everyday demands; and dealing with a sense of powerlessness and lack of control. The identified themes form the basis of the discussion to follow.