Nursing home staff attitudes to ethical conflicts with respect to patient autonomy and paternalism

Six case studies on nursing home staff attitudes to patient autonomy have been analysed. The case studies are based on six polarities within autonomy, as developed by Collopy. In total, 189 professional caregivers, comprising the staff of 13 nursing homes in the county of Stockholm, Sweden, responded to questions based on the case studies. Results show that the attitudes within each professional category had a high level of internal correspondence. Nurses consistently supported patient preferences to the highest degree, followed by assistant nurses and auxiliary staff. Nurses' aides ranked lowest in supporting patient preferences. In only one of the cases were background variables of significance.