Facilitators and Inhibitors of Transition for Elderly Ghanaian Persons and Their Stakeholders to Nursing Home Care

ABSTRACT

Long-term domiciliary care of the chronically ill and frail elderly in fulfilment of the traditional norms of reciprocity by primary caregivers is increasingly becoming untenable. Moving to a nursing home to access long-term care is a major transition in the life course of the frail and chronically ill Ghanaian elderly. The phenomenon is at variance with the cultural practices associated with long-term eldercare. The concept of powerlessness helps explore the circumstances of the elderly and how the key players in the movement process make sense of their subjective experiences. In-depth interviews and participant observations were the techniques adopted for this qualitative research study. Some themes were discovered in the thematic network analysis of the transcripts and field notes, two of which are “accept to be moved” and “sense of abandonment” which are discussed in this article. The article argues that the meanings constructed by the frail and chronically ill elderly in their experiences of accessing long-term care “at home” and how they make sense of them largely influence their acceptance of being moved to the nursing home, and the sense of abandonment experienced in accessing care from the nursing homes.