Supporting older patients in working on rehabilitation goals

Abstract Background: Nurses are consistently present throughout the rehabilitation of older patients but are apprehensive about performing goal-centred care in the multidisci plinary team. Objectives: The aim of this review was to explore working interventions on setting goals and working with goals designed for nurses in geriatric rehabilitation, and to describe their distinctive features. Methods: We performed a scoping review. We searched MEDLINE and CINAHL through August 4, 2021. Search terms related to the following themes: nurses, reha bilitation, geriatric, goal and method. We used snowballing to find additional. From the selected studies, we systematically extracted data on means, materials and the nursing role and summarized them in a narrative synthesis, using intervention com ponent analysis. Results: The study includes 13 articles, describing 11 interventions which were devel oped for six different aims: improving multidisciplinary team care; increasing patient centredness; improving disease management by patients; improving the psychological, and emotional rehabilitation; increasing the nursing involvement in rehabilitation; or helping patients to achieve goals. The interventions appeal to four aspects of the nurs ing profession: assessing self-care skills incorporating patient's preferences; setting goals with patients, taking into account personal needs and what is medically advis able; linking the needs of the patient with multidisciplinary professional treatment and vice versa; and thus, playing an intermediate role and supporting goal achievement. Conclusions: The interventions show that in goal-centred care, the nurse might play an important unifying role between patients and the multidisciplinary team. With the support of nurses, the patient may become more aware of the rehabilitation process and transfer of ownership of treatment goals from the multidisciplinary team to the patient might be achieved. Not many interventions were found meant to support thenursing role. This may indicate a blind spot in the rehabilitation community to the ad ditional value of its contribution.