Promoting speaking-up behaviours among nurses working in the care for older people: A scoping review

To explore interventions employed to foster speaking-up behaviours of registered nurses (RNs) working in the care of older people.

Scoping review.

The updated Joann Briggs Institute scoping review methodological guidelines were followed.

CINAHL, PubMed, PsycINFO, and Scopus were searched.

A total of 1691 titles and abstracts were screened, resulting in 11 articles that met the inclusion criteria. Analysis focused upon intervention types, methodologies, speaking up strategies, barriers and effectiveness. Education was the most used intervention.

There is a lack of published research on successful interventions to promote speaking-up behaviours in the care of older people, particularly relating to poor care practices. Evidence of speaking-up interventions in the residential aged care setting is absent. This highlights the need to develop strategies to support the RN to lead and enable others to raise care concerns.

Developing strategies that enable staff, care recipients and their families to speak up about care concerns is a vital future area for nursing practice development. Nursing leadership of such strategies is central to improving the quality of care for older people, particularly those living in residential aged care.

Older people receiving care should feel respected and be treated humanely. Evidence suggests this is often not the case. This review found a paucity of interventions to promote speaking-up about poor care practices among RNs working in the care of older people. Future research needs to address this, to empower RNs and improve the care afforded to older people.

The PRISMA-ScR (Tricco et al., Annals of Internal Medicine, 169, 467-473, 2018) were adhered to throughout this scoping review.

No patient or public contribution in this review.