Att skada eller skydda? : En kvalitativ studie om dilemmat med begränsningsåtgärder inom äldreomsorgen

The aim of this study is to examine how assisting nurses reflects and talks about physical restraint in dementia care in Sweden. This study is based on three focus group interviews with a total of 13 people working in the eldercare in Sweden. The theoretical framework is a conflict, created by Rosmari Eliasson, between seeing the older persons as a subject and an object and that the conflict doesn’t have a solution. My results show that there is a difficult area to work in which attempts to protect persons with impaired decision-making capacity from harming themselves or be harmed in any other way and at the same time respect the individual and his autonomy. There is a thin line between on one had to harm someone and on the other hand to protect the elderly person. The staff that are working with the elderly people feel forced to use physical restraint as a way of harm reduction, but at the same time they are violating the elderly people’s autonomy. In many cases the physical restraint is justified as a protective measure and the staff doesn’t see the physical restraint as a way of restrict and constrain the elder person