'See Me as a Person': A Qualitative Study of Long-Term Care Recipients Perceptions of High-Quality Care

To explore long-term care recipients' perceptions of high-quality care and how person-centred approaches are applied in the services. A descriptive explorative qualitative design. Data were collected through individual interviews with 19 care recipients and 197 h of participant observation at 10 nursing homes and home care units in three Norwegian municipalities. The data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. The analysis revealed a main theme-to be seen and cared for as an individual-describing the core of the recipients' perceptions of high-quality care. This main theme encompassed two sub-themes. The first-individually adapted care-showed that the recipients valued whether their healthcare workers understood them and their individual care needs and preferences. The second theme-interpersonal encounters-captured the recipients' appreciation of their healthcare workers' presence and ability to create moments where they were seen and treated as human beings. From the perspective of care recipients, high-quality care services depend on how they are treated as individuals and how the care they receive is adapted to their individual needs and preferences. These recipients' perceptions of individualised care delivered by healthcare workers are consistent with the goal of person-centred care. These results highlight the value of and need for non-standard approaches to providing high-quality care. Despite the long-term care services' extensive caregiving tasks and time pressure, they should enable healthcare workers to be present in the moment with care recipients. Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research (COREQ) guidelines are used for this study (Tong, Sainsbury, and Craig 2007). Long-term care recipients and the units where they received care contributed to this study. The recipients' perceptions of the care and the units' arrangements facilitating participant observation played significant roles in this research.