Om du börjar prata - en kvantitativ studie om förhållningssätt och initiativtagande till samtal om döden och existentiella frågor hos personalen inom äldreomsorgen

As a consequence of increased knowledge about health and changed social structures, people tend to grow older and the life expectancy on average keeps on getting higher (Hemström, 2012). The life expectancy of half of the girls and boys born in Sweden during 2011, is 93 respective 91 years old. Today, it is more common that people pass away in their own homes or in retirement homes, than in a hospital (Qvarnström, 1993). The growing elderly population require a growing need of assistants related to the physical and psychological problems that comes with growing older. Despite the need of these conversations, both the elderly and the staff within the elderly care do not talk about feelings and thoughts associated with getting older and dying (Österlind, 2009). We have completed a quantitative survey, viewing how often the employees, working in retirement homes in Skåne, Sweden, starts these kind of conversations with the elderly, their approaches and what individual and/or organisational factors affects the existents of these conversations and the employees approaches. It turns out that the most influential factors that effects approaches and if the employees starts conversations with the elderly about death and existential question, were the ones that are initiated, founded and implemented by the employer. According to our study, individual factors, like religious believes or the number of years in service within the eldery care, did not have as strong impact as the factors implemented by the employer. Due to our time limits, we unfortunately had to accept a falling-off at around 75 percent. This makes the result less reliable even though we got a few statistically significant results