To explore mental health help-seeking behaviours among East Asian American dementia caregivers and construct a theory grounded in their behaviour patterns.
Qualitative using constructivist grounded theory design.
We recruited 20 East Asian American dementia caregivers between August 2023 and March 2024 using purposive sampling. We conducted one-on-one interviews and analysed the data using constructivist grounded theory coding.
We constructed a theory including six concepts and 22 categories. While ‘providing care’, caregivers manage caregiving tasks and personal life, experiencing caregiving challenges. ‘Individual capacity’ is a key to perceiving caregiving situations and ‘considering seeking support’. Various factors can affect ‘using support’. Different types of support can be used separately or in combination. When receiving adequate support, caregivers can ‘gain benefits from support’. These benefits, alongside individual capacities, can shape caregivers' ‘outlook on the present and the future’.
This study explains the mental health help-seeking process within East Asian culture, broadening perspectives on diverse populations and highlighting insights into culturally tailored services.
This study offers clinicians and communities insights into the mental health help-seeking process among East Asian American dementia caregivers and highlights strategies to encourage their use of mental health services.
This theory incorporates aspects of East Asian culture, addressing a research gap in studies of Asian Americans. It may enhance understanding of culturally tailored approaches and facilitate future funding for research and services, considering cultural diversity.
The Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research.
No Patient or Public Contribution.
To characterise nurses' perspectives on factors that influence their ability to provide patient-centered nursing care for autistic patients in a large urban hospital setting.
Qualitative exploratory study.
We conducted semi-structured interviews via Zoom with nurses from a large urban hospital serving primarily adult patients. We analysed interviews using codebook/template analysis. Two researchers coded each interview and resolved discrepancies through discussion.
Twelve nurses (3 males) with 2–20 years of professional experience across research, management, and patient care roles were interviewed. Three primary themes were generated: (1) barriers to patient-centered care, including lack of formal autism education, factors related to the hospital setting, and specific nurse characteristics, such as inflexible adherence to care routines; (2) facilitators of patient-centered care, including experiential autism knowledge, caregiver involvement, and specific nurse characteristics, such as showing respect for all patients; and (3) missed opportunities for patient-centered care, including underuse of behavioural care teams, inadequate time for planning and preparation, and reliance upon restraints and security personnel for behaviour management.
Nurses identified several areas where consistent implementation of existing processes could improve care. A key finding was the need to explore more patient-centered alternatives to the use of restraints and security personnel in response to aggressive or self-injurious behaviour. Overall, our results support the need for competency training to facilitate increased nursing comfort and ability to provide patient-centered care for autistic patients.
This work suggests nurses gain much of their autism-related knowledge through patient care experiences. Despite providing the majority of hands-on care, nurses receive little to no formal training about caring for the growing autistic population.
This work has identified targeted areas to improve education and processes in caring for autistic patients.
No patient or public contribution.