The diversity and complexity in health promotion and empowerment related to older hospital patients: exploring nurses' reflections

Background: In the future, health care services will be challenged by an increasing number of older hospital patients. This prompts a need to focus on and implement a health promoting approach in older people's nursing. Aim: The aim of this exploratory study was to illuminate nurses' reflections about health promotion and empowerment related to older hospital patients. Method: The study had a qualitative descriptive design. The concepts of health, health promotion and empowerment were initially introduced to nurses before participating in multistage focus group interviews. Two groups of nurses participated in three focus group interviews that were conducted by a moderator and an assistant. The interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed with qualitative content analysis. Findings: The nurses unfolded the theme «diversity and complexity marks health promotion and empowerment related to older hospital patients» as the latent content in the text. Two categories, «empowerment as balance of power — a twofold relation» and «focusing on the individual person», described the manifest content in the texts. The categories were further supported by sub-categories. Conclusion: The focus group interviews showed the ambiguity and complexity in the interpretation of the concepts — health promotion and empowerment — related to the older hospital patient. The findings also indicated that multistage focus group interviews may be a useful tool to develop nurses' reflections about their clinical practice.