Feeling existentially touched--a phenomenological notion of the well-being of elderly living in special housing accommodation from the perspective of care professionals.

This article presents a phenomenological analysis of interview material, in which 12 care professionals in elderly care reflect on the elderly's well-being within the frame of special housing accommodation. The perspective of the care professionals is of special interest. The findings show that the well-being is characterized as the elderly's feelings of being existentially touched. The well-being is an existential experience of being acknowledged as a human being and is an approach that classifies the elderly's needs as those of having, loving, and being. The meaning of the phenomenon is elucidated by the constituents: (1) to feel the freedom of choice, (2) to feel pleasure, and (3) to feel closeness to someone or something. The findings contribute new understanding of well-being in the elderly care by its existential dimension of the well-being as "just being" and of doing things in order to experience meaningfulness. Accordingly, the well-being of the elderly as it is seen from the perspective of the care professionals involves both carers' subjectivity and intersubjectivity between the care professional and the elderly. An implication for promoting elderly's well-being is to develop awareness of these existential dimensions.

Accounts of pain experience in an elderly care context.

This article aims to show how a discourse and communication based approach in the context of the care of the elderly provides a basis for reflecting on pain. Based on six hours of data from talk encounters between care professionals and elderly clients, an activity analysis of institutional settings and categorization of interactional discourse was undertaken. The focus was: (a) how elderly people initiated painful accounts, and (b) how the professionals oriented to such accounts. It is found that pain-talks are governed by the institutional practice of different phases:framing; mapping troubles and symptoms; clients' self presentations; counseling, and concluding. This phase structure exemplifies knowledge of communicative activities and is part of practical knowledge which the party, or at least the professional, is expected to become acquainted with. A thematic interactional map of critical moments related to pain as (a) social death and hope, and (b) presentation of self as past and self as present emerges. The caring aspect is to support hope and to change the focus from social death to life and recovering. In foregrounding health, it is important for the elderly people to affirm their identity of themselves as being good and honest persons.