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DOI: 10.1191/0969733005ne818oa Older Widows Speculations and Expectancies Concerning Professional Home-Care ProvidersUniversity of Missouri-Columbia, MO, USA, PorterEJ{at}missouri.edu
University of Missouri-Columbia, MO, USA Little is known about older persons expectancies (or anticipations) about the possible actions of home-care professionals, although such data have implications for the ethics of home care and home-care policies. From a longitudinal study of older womens experience of home care, findings are reported concerning their expectancies of professional home-care providers. A descriptive phenomenological method was used to detail the structure of the experience and its context. Data were analyzed from a series of interviews with 13 women aged 82 to 96 years. Among the five key structures of experience were finding that someone has the job of helping me here and determining where the helpers field lies. Two subsets within a category of expectancies were differentiated: speculations about helpers possible actions and expectancies about outcomes of helpers actions. As parameters of relational ethics, clients speculations and expectancies are appropriate bases for dialogue about older widows relationships with home-care professionals and the foci of home-care policies.
Key Words: age 80 years and over home care services
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