Mental hygiene in palliative care. Differences between nursing staff and other professionals in geriatric long-term care

Background. The mental strain for nursing staff in palliative care has been sufficiently described in recent years. However, in a nursing home, employees from other professional guilds are also active in the same context and often have intensive contact with the residents as well as with their relatives. It could already be shown that their mental strain does not differ from those of the nursing staff in several constructs. However, the special demands of palliative care were not considered in the past studies. Aims. The present study tries to assess the effects of palliative settings on mental hygiene and compare nursing to non-nursing staff. Methods. In the nursing home Mattenhof-Irchelpark, which belongs to the City of Zurich Nursing Homes, an enquiry by questionnaires was carried out among nursing and non-nursing staff. A total of 72 employees participated in this study. We examined the constructs "contact with relatives" and "mental hygiene" with a 7-point Likert scale. Results. Employees from non-nursing divisions estimated their competence in "contact with relatives" to be significantly lower (p=0.005) and they felt equally burdened as the nursing staff. Analysis of the scale "mental hygiene" yielded significantly higher values of stress for the non-nursing staff in comparison to the nursing staff (p=0.022). Conclusion. In summary, it can be stated that not only the nursing staff feels confronted with psychic challenges in the context of palliative care. Also employees from non-nursing areas perceive these challenges at least equally.