Autonomy is important in every stage of life. However, little is known about how autonomy is enhanced for older adults living in residential care facilities (RCFs). This leads to the research question: which facilitators and barriers to autonomy of older adults with physical impairments due to ageing and chronic health conditions living in RCFs are known? The results will be organised according to the framework of person-centred practice, because this is related to autonomy enhancement. To answer the research question, a systematic literature search and review was performed in the electronic databases CINAHL, PsycINFO, PubMed, Social Services Abstracts and Sociological Abstracts. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were derived from the research question. Selected articles were analysed and assessed on quality using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. Facilitators and barriers for autonomy were found and arranged in four themes: characteristics of residents, prerequisites of professional care-givers, care processes between resident and care-giver, and environment of care. The established facilitators and barriers are relational and dynamic. For a better understanding of the facilitators and barriers to autonomy for older adults with physical impairments living in RCFs, a description is based on the 35 included articles. Autonomy is a capacity to influence the environment and make decisions irrespective of having executional autonomy, to live the kind of life someone desires to live in the face of diminishing social, physical and/or cognitive resources and dependency, and it develops in relationships. The results provide an actual overview and lead to a better understanding of barriers and facilitators for the autonomy of older adults with physical impairments in RCFs. For both residents and care-givers, results offer possibilities to sustain and reinforce autonomy. Scientifically, the study creates new knowledge on factors that influence autonomy, which can be used to enhance autonomy.

Autonomy is important to persons, including when they are living in nursing homes. Especially the relational dimension of autonomy is crucial for older adults with physical impairments. They generally have the decisional capacity to make choices about how they want to live their lives, but are often unable, or only partially able, to exercise these decisions themselves. To execute decisions, older adults are dependent on those who support them or care for them. However, little is known about how nursing home residents maintain autonomy in daily life and how others are involved in the decisions and execution of the decisions. To examine how older adults with physical impairments living in nursing homes maintain autonomy in daily life, shadowing, a non-participative observational method, was used. Seventeen older adults were shadowed during the course of one day. The observation ended with a brief interview. After the shadowing, the detailed observation notes were typed out, combined with the verbatim transcript resulting in one extensive report per shadowee. All 17 reports were coded and analysed thematically. Six elements for how older adults maintain autonomy in relation with others were identified, i.e. ‘being able to decide and/or execute decisions’, ‘active involvement’, ‘transferring autonomy to others’, ‘using preferred spaces’, ‘choosing how to spend time in daily life’ and ‘deciding about important subjects’. For all six elements established in this study, it was found that older adults with physical impairments living in nursing homes could only maintain autonomy in daily life when others, such as staff, family and friends, were responsive to signals of the needs of older adults.