Turkish Journal of Geriatrics 2012 , Vol 15, Issue 3
CAN ELDERLY PRIVACY BE IGNORED? A QUALITATIVE RESEARCH ON NURSING HOMES RESIDENTS IN ANTALYA
Mustafa Cumhur Ä°ZGÄ°
Akdeniz Ãœniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi Tıp Tarihi ve Etik Anabilim Dalı ANTALYA Introduction: With the global growth of elderly population, the need for elderly care increases; consequently, the relationship of elderly people with the “others” also increases. This mandatory relation may sometimes result in compromising privacy of the elderly. In accordance with this concern, this study aims to assess the concept of privacy of the elderly.

Materials and Method: A qualitative research was conducted to understand nursing home residents' thoughts about privacy of the elderly, and to determine the components of privacy. It comprises all nursing homes in Antalya. Seventeen different elderly persons were chosen from those nursing homes according to the research criteria; and they were interviewed deeply. All interviews were evaluated with a content analysis and a descriptive analysis.

Results: The results of the study show that generally information confidentiality was not considered as a component of privacy; on the contrary, privacy was mostly associated with religious and sexual confidentiality.

Conclusion: In the literature, information confidentiality is found as an important component of privacy. In the light of the research results and the literature review, we conclude that the ethical sensitivity of a society should be increased for acceptance of information confidentiality as a component of privacy. Keywords : Privacy; Confidentiality; Personal Autonomy; Aging; Nursing Homes