Challenges to communication management in residential aged care

Communication enables the expression of a person's fundamental attributes, defined as one's personhood. Communication impairment threatens personhood, reducing autonomy and independence, limiting self-expression, and restricting interpersonal relationships. The majority of older Australians living in residential aged care experience communication impairment, yet speech pathology services provided in this setting are limited. With an ageing population and global focus on person-centred aged care, there is a need to better understand issues impacting communication management in residential aged-care settings. To facilitate this understanding, individual, in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 speech pathologists working in residential aged care. Qualitative content analysis revealed disparate opinions among participants about the importance and nature of communication management in the setting. Numerous factors challenging clinicians' ability to provide services for communication in the setting were discussed. Despite these challenges, the majority of participants expressed a desire to expand communication management in residential aged care.