Prendre le risque d'investir les familles, une école de vie pour les soignants

Admission to a nursing home is wrongly regarded as the termination of family care and the commencement of institutional care. Conflicts between families and formal caregivers have multiple causes, often but not always, centered on the best interests of the resident. Families perceive nurses and nursing home staff as providers of technical care, and they perceive themselves as having an important role in providing social and emotional care. But while families trust the clinical judgment of the staff, the staffs are reluctant to trust family caregivers, especially in situations where the care entails an element of risk. Families are wary of any standardization of the care process, and want more personalized and more compassionate interactions with elderly and sick people. In this article, we explore the sources of difficulties between families and nursing home caregivers, and offer some advice on how to regulate them and above all prevent them.