How Care Providers Construct and Frame Problems Related to Violence in Institutional Care for Older People

Abstract

The aim was to describe how care providers discursively constructed and framed problems related to the occurrence of violence in their interactions with older persons in institutional care. The study followed a social constructionist approach where violence was considered a social phenomenon constructed in discursive processes. It was based on the assumption that the way in which a problem is articulated is closely connected to beliefs, which in turn create and maintain a space for the support of certain actions and solutions that are possible and relevant in the given context. The analyzed text comprised narrative interviews with 46 care providers who had been involved in violence that occurred in social interactions with older persons. The analysis was inspired by discourse theory. The interactions were presented as a difficult and unavoidable problem related to the illness, caring for the body, competence and profession as well as the social order. The descriptions of the violence and related problems are manifestations of discourses. The prevailing discourses in the text were the medical and physical. The presentations of problems can be used to challenge dominant ways of thinking as well as the beliefs and common understandings about the subject.