title: Intentions of older homebound women with regard to reaching help quickly.
abstract: The purposes of this longitudinal phenomenological study were to describe intentions of older women relative to reaching help quickly (RHQ), to place those intentions in personal-social context, and to compare intentions of subscribers to a personal emergency response system (PERS) and nonsubscribers. The 40 participants were aged 85 or older, resided alone, and needed help to leave home. Two contextual features ("recognizing my risk of being unable to RHQ" and "recognizing my need for a RHQ device to sustain myself") were basic to two phenomena ("negotiating reliance on people to reach quickly if I need help" and "reducing my risk of being unable to RHQ"). There was greater variation in intentions and context within each of the two naturally occurring groups (subscribers and nonsubscribers) than between them. Practitioners cannot assume that women intend to use available RHQ devices in specific situations; preventive nursing involves proactive exploration of intentions relative to RHQ.
authors.affiliation: School of Nursing, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53719, USA. hporter2@wisc.edu
authors.forename: Eileen J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Porter
authors.forename: Lawrence H
authors.initials: LH
authors.lastname: Ganong
authors.forename: Sandy
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Matsuda
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D018577:Homebound Persons; D006801:Humans