Is it time for a comprehensive approach in older home care clients' care planning in Finland?

Home-care services require access to high quality information. Apart from the provision of right-time organised planning of care and to document information about clients' needs, in home care, the care planning is intended to facilitate continuity and individual nursing through nursing documentation of the assessment of the client.

The aim was to describe the contents of older (+75 years) home-care clients' electronic care and service plans and to evaluate how the clients' resources have been taken into account.

The data were collected from the care and service plans (n = 437) of home-care services during July 2010. The data were analysed by quantitative methods and by thematic content analysis.

Based on the analysis, medication was the most reported component in all plans (92.7%); other commonly reported components were self-care (85.4%) and coping (78.0%). Components within respiratory, follow-up treatment, life cycle and health behaviour were forgotten. Most of the care and service plans were designed from the home-care professionals' point of view but the plans lacked the perspective of older clients.

To be able to promote older home clients' ability to live at home, home-care planning needs to be individually designed and must take into account clients' needs and their perspectives regarding meaningful activities and social relationships. In addition, there is a need to develop a more comprehensive care planning system, based on the clients' individual needs and standards of care planning.