Nurses' experiences of barriers and facilitators to family participation in the care for hospitalized older adult patients: A qualitative study.

Background: Family participation in the care of hospitalized older adult patients has always been associated with positive outcomes. However, its optimal implementation requires adequate knowledge of facilitators and barriers, which have been given less attention in the literature. Therefore, the present study was conducted to explain the barriers and facilitators of family participation in the care for hospitalized older adult patients from the perspective of nurses and patients' family members.

Materials and methods: Based on the grounded theory qualitative study, semistructured in-depth interviews were utilized to collect the experiences of 13 nurses and 4 family members of older adult patients from two public hospitals between 2023 and 2024. Sampling was initially purposive and continued theoretically until data saturation. The data were analyzed using the approach of Strauss and Corbin 2015.

Results: The analysis of the obtained data led to the emergence of five categories, including family participation-unfriendly hospital, nonparticipatory work environment, inadequate professional competence of nurses to participate, the complexity of older adult patient care, and family capacity for participation. Each of these categories had subategories, resulting in a total of 14 subcategories for the five categories.

Conclusion: The study results help increase nursing knowledge about factors affecting family participation in care and provide a basis for designing research, interventions, and developing programs to increase family participation. In addition, it helps formulate hospital policies regarding family participation in providing care for older adult patients.