Qualitative Studies https://tidsskrift.dk/qual <p>QS is an interdisciplinary journal that focusses on qualitative methods and their application within the humanities and social sciences. We welcome experimental and unorthodox manuscripts pertaining to the thematic calls. </p> en-US <p><span style="color: black;">Copyright belongs to the author and&nbsp;</span><span style="color: black;"><em>Qualitative Studies</em></span></p> alfred@ikp.aau.dk (Alfred Sköld) pclement@hum.aau.dk (Peter Clement Lund) Sun, 25 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100 OJS 3.3.0.13 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 Caring About Elderly Care https://tidsskrift.dk/qual/article/view/143667 Britta Møller, Charlotte Wegener Copyright (c) 2024 https://tidsskrift.dk/qual/article/view/143667 Sun, 25 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100 Nurses’ Experience of Caring amidst Developments in Welfare Technology in Elderly Care https://tidsskrift.dk/qual/article/view/143668 <p>In Norway, the dominant policy understanding of welfare technology sees its development in elderly care as exclusively positive and effective, benefitting both the individual and society at large. However, nurses tend to be viewed as an obstacle to broader use of welfare technology in primary care. This article looks at how nurses experience caring amidst developments in welfare technology in elderly care. The study draws on a psychosocial approach (Olesen, 2020) that enables interpretation of nurses’ expressions of their experiences with caring and welfare technology on the individual level and in the historical, societal and sociocultural context the nurses are situated within. The article illustrates how welfare technology must not be understood one-dimensionally as tools providing specific outcomes and demonstrates how the nurses’ experience of caring amidst developments in welfare technology may be understood as layers of contradictory notions about care, welfare technology and the nursing role.</p> Sissel Merete Finholt-Pedersen Copyright (c) 2024 https://tidsskrift.dk/qual/article/view/143668 Sun, 25 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100 Interacting Logics of Learning and Knowledge in Elderly Care https://tidsskrift.dk/qual/article/view/143669 <p>This article explores the interaction between understandings of learning, knowledge, and problems in elderly care. The study is based on five focus group interviews with care work trainees, internship supervisors, and care workers in Danish nursing homes. Combining Ellström’s understanding of learning logics and Dewey’s understanding of knowledge forms, the study finds that reproductive learning and theory-based knowledge are privileged over developmental learning and experience-based knowledge. As the analysis shows that some tasks in care work require complex problem solving, the article discusses the problematic nature of this imbalance. We argue for more attention to be paid to the developmental learning environment, with the inclusion and qualification of experience-based knowledge. The article proposes a model for analyzing links between learning, knowledge, and problem understandings, and discusses the implications for understanding quality in elderly care.</p> Britta Møller, Anne Birgitte Nyhus Rohwedder Copyright (c) 2024 https://tidsskrift.dk/qual/article/view/143669 Sun, 25 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100 ‘It can be difficult to help them’ https://tidsskrift.dk/qual/article/view/143671 <p>Older marginalized citizens with severe substance use are presently a growing population in Denmark. They struggle with comprehensive and complex needs for care and treatment, which put high demands on health and care professionals working with them. Yet, the complexity of their needs for care and the care provided to them is highly understudied. We take our empirical point of departure in an anthropological pilot study of care work in private homes and retirement homes in two municipalities, where we followed care professionals on their shifts and interviewed them in order to identify challenging situations in daily care. Building on Mol’s concept of logic of care (Mol 2008), we examine how the care professionals in their everyday work with substance using older citizens faced dilemmas in the provision of care within the logics of on the one hand Danish standards for “correct” care and on the other respecting the autonomy of substance using citizens.</p> Jonas Strandholdt Bach, Bagga Bjerge, Johanne Korsdal Sørensen Copyright (c) 2024 https://tidsskrift.dk/qual/article/view/143671 Sun, 25 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100 Loving her to the end https://tidsskrift.dk/qual/article/view/143672 <p>How can I honour my ageing loved one, caring for her with respect and dignity, thereby loving her to the end? This paper is an autoethnography of my experience providing elder care for my mother during the final six years of her life. At the conclusion of this personal narrative, I offer a reflection on the practice of embodied caregiving and perspectivalism, which prompted a transformation in me. The scope encompasses the stages of elder care, from taking on the task to the time of death of the loved one. Adult transformative learning theory informs the paper, as I progress through these steps in learning how to care for my mother. A subtext is that of ascribing great value to the elderly through the means of stepping into their world in embodied caregiving. This process of honouring my mother leads to the goal of loving her to the end.</p> Diana Cochran Copyright (c) 2024 https://tidsskrift.dk/qual/article/view/143672 Sun, 25 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100 Who knows? Mobilization of Employee Knowledge in Nursing Homes https://tidsskrift.dk/qual/article/view/143674 <p>In Norway, as in many other countries, professionalized elderly care faces a twin challenge: lack of competent labor combined with disinvestment in elderly care. Furthermore, while the number of elderly people in need of care is projected to rise over the coming decades, politicians are reluctant to commit more resources to the sector. Instead, innovation is seen as the solution. But in the policy debate on these issues, innovation is largely understood to be technological. This paper argues that the experience-based knowledge of assistants, healthcare professionals and nurses working in elderly care is an overlooked resource for innovation. By discussing three ways such knowledge is mobilized for innovation in nursing homes, we show that employee knowledge can help solve problems articulate under a logic of care, but also to solve problems traditionally thought of as belonging to the domain of management.</p> Stian Bragtved, Ragnhild Holmen Waldahl Copyright (c) 2024 https://tidsskrift.dk/qual/article/view/143674 Sun, 25 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100 Reciprocity and caregiver competencies. https://tidsskrift.dk/qual/article/view/143675 <p>Despite the impact of dementia, people’s needs to connect with others and their environment remains. With progression of a dementia disease, a person will gradually be more dependent on assistance and care. In this study, we aimed to conceptualise our understanding of person-centred dementia care, theoretically based on Tom Kitwood’s ontology of personhood. A hermeneutic constructivist approach with four explorative phases allowed for a metaphorical way of working with implicit knowledge related to professional caregiving. We used Lego Serious Play™ for data collection and as a method for exploring, articulating, and conceptualising how we understood caregiver interactions. Based on our analysis, we developed a co-created, condensed model suggesting an ideographic understanding of person-attuned interactions in caregiving, emphasizing knowledge about personhood and reciprocity. We unfolded how professional caregivers represent an essential value in dementia care by providing a feeling of safety through person-attuned interactions, introspection and mentalisation. We found that caregiver competencies depend on resources, culture, and interdisciplinary collaboration, which puts a strong demand on continuous training and supervision and for political and societal priorities.</p> Hanne Mette Ridder, Jens Anderson-Ingstrup, Julie Kolbe Krøier, Orii McDermott Copyright (c) 2024 https://tidsskrift.dk/qual/article/view/143675 Sun, 25 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100 Rummaging Around in a Handbag of Caring Research https://tidsskrift.dk/qual/article/view/143677 <p>In this autoethnographic article, the first steps in the process of forming a methodological framework for a caring research practice using drawing as a method are sketched out. By employing the metaphor ‘a handbag of caring research,’ the article underlines the sense of unsystematic ‘rummaging around’ characterizing the initial phases of a research process, but also the idea that caring research can produce important insights despite the sense of messiness. To circumnavigate the complexities arising when drawing and writing are employed as forms of line making, that is, ‘a pencil’, ‘a moral compass’ is needed. More specifically, such a moral compass may be of use not only for the researcher but for all involved in the research process. In this case, the moral compass consists of Tronto’s four analytically separate yet interconnected phases of care - Caring about, Taking Care of, Caregiving, and Care-receiving, and four moral elements of care – attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness. A variety of drawing practices are used as inspiration for the development of a tentative methodological framework based on an ethics of care, which can be of use in multiple research fields, including but not limited to the elderly care sector, which is used as the point of departure in this article.</p> Julie Kordovsky Copyright (c) 2024 https://tidsskrift.dk/qual/article/view/143677 Sun, 25 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100