Ideas of home in palliative care research: A concept analysis

Abstract

Aim: To explore the concept of home and its' expressed spatialities in current palliative care research.

Background: Home is a central environment for living, caring, and dying. However, pure investigations of the sets of ideas linked to the concept seemed missing. Although identified as an important location, spatial perspectives expressed through the concept of home appeared unexplored.

Design: Rodgers' evolutionary concept analysis.

Data sources: Scientific articles published between January 2009 and September 2015.

Review methods: Rodgers' evolutionary concept analysis. Resulting attributes were explored from two geographically informed spatial perspectives.

Results: As main results, six attributes were identified and explored: Home as actor-capable of acting; emotional environment-something people have feelings for; place-a part of personal identity and a location; space-complex and relational spatial connections and a site for care; setting-passive background and absolute space; becoming-a fluid spatiality constantly folded. Examples of attributes and suggestions for further concept development were identified.

Conclusions: The concept reflects various sets of ideas as well as expressing both relational and absolute perspectives of space. The most challenging for nursing research and practice seems to be investigation, operationalization, and testing the implementation of sets of ideas reflecting a relational thinking of space.

Keywords: Rodgers' evolutionary concept analysis; home; nursing; palliative care research; space.