Navigating Religious Refusal to Nursing Home Care for LGBTQ+ Residents: Comparisons Between Floor Staff and Managers

Abstract

Objectives: Religious exemptions (exceptions to nondiscrimination laws for individual religious/moral beliefs) in health care have surged, negatively affecting LGBTQ+ older adults in nursing homes with some of the highest caregiving needs. Given job differences between floor staff and managers, this study asks: How does meaning-making differ between nursing home floor staff and managers when staff refuse to care for LGBTQ+ residents? To answer this question, this study uses social coherence as a conceptual framework to understand the process of reflection that staff employ when a colleague invokes a religious exemption to care.

Methods: This qualitative comparative study uses in-depth semistructured interviews to compare responses from nursing home floor staff and managers (n = 80). Qualitative content analysis incorporated inductive and deductive coding approaches.

Results: Staff invoked 5 frames to reach social coherence: fairness, resident safety and comfort, individual religious beliefs, job obligations, and laws/policies. Floor staff and managers invoked the same 2 reasons (fairness, resident safety and comfort) to reach social coherence. However, floor staff differed from managers by also invoking individual religious beliefs and job obligations; whereas managers turned to laws and policies to reconcile tensions between religious rights and LGBTQ+ resident rights to care.

Discussion: In an increasingly polarized world, findings from this study illuminate nuances (and potential new areas of allyship) in how floor staff and managers understand and use various frames when deciding whether or not to accommodate a colleague who refuses care to an LGBTQ+ resident because of religious or moral reasons.

Keywords: Discrimination; Nursing homes; Qualitative; Religious rights; Social coherence.