‘Entering a New World’: empathic awareness as the key to positive family/staff relationships in care homes

Despite an almost universal policy of community care, placing a relative in a care home will be an increasingly common event as population ageing continues. Studies suggest that most families wish to remain involved in care following placement but that they often experience difficulties in establishing relationships with staff. This paper reports on the fifth phase of a Swedish study exploring the experience of placement from a temporal perspective and including the views of all the key actors (relatives, staff in the community, staff in care homes). The focus here is placed on the perceptions of care home staff and their perceived role in relation to spouses who have recently placed a partner. The study adopted a grounded theory approach and data were collected from in-depth interviews with 16 staff members of varying grades and positions. Analysis of the data suggested 3 levels of awareness amongst staff: empathic awareness, guarded awareness and limited awareness. The characteristics of empathic awareness are outlined and its implications briefly considered.