Dignity as experienced by nursing home staff

Aims and objectives.  To explore nursing home staff members' experiences of what dignity in end of life care means to older people and to themselves. Background.  Dignity is a concept often used in end-of-life care, but its meaning is rarely clarified. Design.  Qualitative descriptive study. Methods.  Content analysis. This study is based on interviews with 21 staff members in four different nursing homes in Sweden. Findings.  The results show that staff members balanced between providing for the older person's physical needs while wishing to be able to deliver a 'deeper' level of care. The older people's dignity is presented in the main theme: Feeling trust - Showing respect. The staff members' dignity is presented in the main theme: Maintaining self-respect - Being shown respect. Threats to dignity are presented in the main theme: conflicts between the ideal and the reality. Conclusions.  The results reveal that nursing home staff members deal with a moral conflict between what they are able to deliver and what they would like to provide in the care of older people. Relevance to clinical practice.  To promote older people's dignity, there is a need to take account of staff members' work situation. Supervision and continuous education could be one way of achieving this.