Attitudes of older Egyptians towards nursing care at home: a qualitative study

The aim of this study was to identify the attitudes of older Egyptians towards receiving nursing care at home and to identify the characteristics that allow differentiating between various types of these attitudes. The number of older persons in Egypt requiring nursing care is increasing. Care was traditionally provided by the family, but the social network is changing in bigger cities. Beside geriatric homes, older Egyptians can refer to private helpers and a small number of home care services. Structured guideline interviews were performed with 33 Egyptians above 60 years of age. Participants were chosen by purposeful sampling. Twelve of them received home care. Interviews were analyzed with qualitative content analysis according to Mayring. Participants could be classified under three main categories of care seeking types: (1) insufficient income, (2) sufficient income and family dependent decision about care, (3) sufficient income and independent decision about care. Variations under these categories were due to differences in the social network and the perceived self-help abilities. Examples for the influence of factors which explained variations were not identified in every category to the same extent. Some types of care seeking that exist in reality may be missing in this study. Findings suggest the hypothesis that care seeking of older Egyptians is related to their social status. Those with insufficient income seem to reject home care whereas independent personalities with sufficient income may be the main winners of this offer.