The objective of this study was to understand how nursing professionals perceive the environment of a hospital emergency for elderly care. This is an exploratory and descriptive study with a qualitative approach, performed with 15 nursing professionals from the emergency unit of a general hospital in Santa Catarina, Brazil. Data were collected in June 2013 through semi structured interview. We used the Collective Subject Discourse (CSD) for analysis. Three central ideas were identified: Inadequate physical structure for elderly care; Insufficient quantity of personnel to meet the demand; and Need for agility in care and referral of the elderly.
Conclusion:
The results show that the environment of the emergency service, which is the context of this study, is below that expected to provide adequate care for the elderly. Participants pointed suggestions such as shorter length of stay in the unit for the seniors and adjustments related to physical structure and quantitative of professionals.
Emergency Nursing; Elderly Health; Health Facility Environment; Nursing Care; Qualitative Research