| The complex health profile of older adults entering hospital presents staff and administrators with new challenges. In a climate of fiscal restraint, competing priorities and public pressure, it is necessary for acute care hospitals to rethink their views of caring for older adults.;This critical ethnographic study applies a social ecological perspective using the concept of person-environment fit to illuminate how problems arise from conflict between needs and expectations. Constant comparative analysis and coding techniques take account of hospital operations and the perspectives of hospital employees and older people together. Data included hospital observations, and interviews with older adults (N=11) and hospital employees (N=14). Procedures to ensure rigor included continuous reflexivity, participant selection, triangulating data sources, peer debriefing, multiple checks, and an audit trail. |
