AIM: This paper is a report of a concept analysis of the meaning of preserving dignity. BACKGROUND: Preserving dignity, especially when caring for older adults, is essential when giving nursing care. There is a lack of clarity about what kinds of caring activities lead to preserved dignity. METHOD: Data were collected using several databases (CINAHL, Age Info, Libris, Medline, Pub Med, Psyc INFO and Blackwell Synergy) covering the years 1990-2005. The keywords used were 'dignity', 'human dignity', 'preserving dignity', 'elderly', 'aged', combined with 'patients/persons', 'caring relation' and 'nursing'. The analysis covered 53 articles, dissertations, reports and textbooks. FINDINGS: Dignity may be defined as a concept that relates to basic humanity. Dignity consists of inherent and external dimensions, which are common for all humans and at the same time are unique for each person, relating to social and cultural aspects. The attributes of preserving dignity are individualized care, control restored, respect, advocacy and sensitive listening. Antecedents are professional knowledge, responsibility, reflection and non-hierarchical organization. The consequences are strengthening life spirit, an inner sense of freedom, self-respect and successful coping. CONCLUSION: Preserving an older adult's dignity is complex. By using the attributes in, for example, nursing documentation, the action and value of preserving dignity could be made visible as a professional nursing activity.

Touch has been a part of the healing process in many civilisations and cultures throughout the centuries. Nurses frequently use touch to provide comfort and reach their patients. The aim of this study was to illuminate the meaning of receiving tactile touch when being cared for in an intensive care unit. Tactile touch is a complementary method including the use of effleurage, which means soft stroking movements along the body. The context used to illuminate the meaning of receiving tactile touch was two general intensive care units (ICUs). Six patients, who have been cared for in the two ICUs, participated in the study. A phenomenological–hermeneutical method based on the philosophy of Ricoeur and developed for nursing research by Lindseth and Norberg [Lindseth A, Norberg A. A phenomenological hermeneutical method for researching lived experience. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences, 2004;18:145–53] was chosen for the analysis. Data consisted of narratives, which were analysed in three recurring phases: naïve understanding, structural analyses and comprehensive understanding. Two main themes were found: being connected to oneself and being unable to gain and maintain pleasure. The comprehensive understanding of receiving tactile touch during intensive care seems to be an expression of enjoying tactile touch and gaining hope for the future. This study reveals that it is possible to experience moments of pleasure in the midst of being a severely ill patient at an ICU and, through this experience also gain hope.

Aim. To explore the effects of five-day tactile touch intervention on oxytocin in intensive care patients. The hypotheses were that tactile touch increases the levels of oxytocin after intervention and over a six-day period. Background. Research on both humans and animals shows a correlation between touch and increased levels of oxytocin which inspired us to measure the levels of oxytocin in arterial blood to obtain information about the physiological effect of tactile touch. Design. Randomised controlled trial. Method. Forty-four patients from two general intensive care units, were randomly assigned to either tactile touch (n = 21) or standard treatment - an hour of rest (n = 23). Arterial blood was drawn for measurement of oxytocin, before and after both treatments. Results. No significant mean changes in oxytocin levels were found from day 1 to day 6 in the intervention group (mean -3.0 pM, SD 16.8). In the control group, there was a significant (p = 0.01) decrease in oxytocin levels from day 1 to day 6, mean 26.4 pM (SD 74.1). There were no significant differences in changes between day 1 and day 6 when comparing the intervention group and control group, mean 23.4 pM (95% CI -20.2-67.0). Conclusion. Our hypothesis that tactile touch increases the levels of oxytocin in patients at intensive care units was not confirmed. An interesting observation was the decrease levels of oxytocin over the six-day period in the control group, which was not observed in the intervention group. Relevance to clinical practice. Tactile touch seemed to reduce the activity of the sympathetic nervous system. Further and larger studies are needed in intensive care units to confirm/evaluate tactile touch as a complementary caring act for critically ill patients.

The study aimed to investigate the effects of a five-day tactile touch intervention in order to find new and unconventional measures to moderate the detrimental influence of patients’ stressors during intensive care. The hypothesis was that tactile touch would decrease stress indicators such as anxiety, glucose metabolism, blood pressure, heart rate and requirements of sedative drugs and noradrenalin. A randomized controlled trial was undertaken with 44 patients, which were assigned either to tactile touch or standard treatment (a rest hour). Observations of the stress indicators were made before, during and after the intervention or standard treatment. The study showed that tactile touch led to significantly lower levels of anxiety. The circulatory parameters suggested increased circulatory stability indicated by a reduction in noradrenalin requirement. The results need to be further validated through studies with larger sample sizes.

Today mental health professionals are challenged in supporting people with severe mental illness that live within their communities. The community treatment is, however, characterized by an uncertainty about how to best support them in their everyday lives, and professionals from different disciplines often have divergent opinions about the care. The aim of this study is to explicate the existential meaning of living with severe mental illness. Interviews with persons who relocated from an institutional setting to a community placement were analyzed within an interpretive approach. The results of the study found that people with severe mental illness experience an existential loneliness due to difficulties in changing previous suppositions about human relationships. They do not develop connections through shared new experiences with other people in their lives. One central implication of the findings is that because people with severe mental illness seem unable to benefit from new experiences, mental health nurses should consider relational aspects when planning, implementing, and evaluating nursing care.

Aim and objectives. To explore relatives’ information needs and the characteristics of their information-seeking process shortly after the stroke event and six months later. Background. Providing relatives of stroke survivors with information is important, as lack of information increases their uncertainty and risk becoming the ‘second patient in the family’ and early death. Therefore, it is essential to be aware of relatives’ information needs and information-seeking process the first six months after stroke. Design. This qualitative study has a descriptive design. Method. Open-ended interviews were conducted with sixteen relatives after stroke survivor’s admission to stroke unit and six months later with nine of these relatives. Data were analysed by means of content analysis. Results. The identified information needs covered the spectrum from stroke survivor’s medical condition because nurses’ actions to relatives’ changed health and life situation. Furthermore, relatives’ information-seeking process was found to be related to their level of personal involvement, situational circumstances, different forms of knowledge and sources of information. Conclusions. Relatives’ search for information emerges when health and lifestyle changes occur in survivors or themselves. It is important that this information affect them personally. Also, they need to develop different forms of knowledge when they cannot trust their own competences. As a result, instead of following established curricula based on their beliefs of relatives’ information needs, nurses need to practice on identifying relatives’ information needs. Relevance to practice. Different information needs and characteristics described in the study can serve as guidance in the development and implementation of pedagogical interventions to support relatives of stroke survivors. One pedagogical implication is to explore what a specific relative wants to know by how he/she talks or thinks about it. Thus, it must be taken into consideration that level of personal involvement, situational circumstances, sources of information and factual knowledge, understanding and skills are intertwined.

The aim of this study was to illuminate the meaning of being a relative of a stroke survivor in the first six months after hospital discharge. The study is a part of a larger research project focusing on pedagogic strategies for relatives of stroke survivors. Qualitative interviews were performed with nine relatives of stroke survivors. The data were analysed by means of phenomenological hermeneutic analysis. In the analysis two main themes emerged; (1) awareness of the irrevocably altered life situation and (2) being strong in the altered life situation, which revealed that relatives are actively involved in “a struggle for freedom”, as they have no wish to adapt to the illness or its consequences. Instead, they want to choose their own way of life and write their own history. For that reason, they try to integrate the illness and its consequences by influencing and changing the stroke survivor, health professionals and their surroundings to suit their own needs. The results contribute to facilitating the health professionals’ work by showing that the relatives are free and independent human beings who have the capacity and power to create their own history. Focus should be directed towards identifying and supporting the relatives capacity to create history, and therefore, health professionals need to heed them.