Changes in working conditions for home healthcare workers and impacts on their work activity and on their emotions

Weerdt, Corinne van de; Baratta, René

doi:10.1590/0103-6513.108412

Cited by 9 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 17 publications

(15 reference statements)

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“…In line with previous research, showing that home‐care work is mentally demanding (see e.g. Trydegård, , Van De Weerdt & Baratta, , Yeandle et al, ), the findings of this study illustrate that there has been an increase in mental exhaustion between 2005 and 2015. This could partly be viewed against the background of an amplified workload and decreased autonomy and support.…”

Section: Discussion: Understanding Changes In the Work Situation In Hsupporting

confidence: 92%

Care workers under pressure – A comparison of the work situation in Swedish home care 2005 and 2015

Strandell

2019

Health Soc Care Community

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As in many Western countries, eldercare services in Sweden have changed dramatically over recent decades. Population ageing, ageing‐in‐place policies, pressures to contain costs and organisational reforms linked to New Public Management are challenging public home care. There is, however, limited knowledge about how the job content and working conditions have changed in the Swedish home care across this period. This article aims to analyse and compare the work situation in the Swedish home care in 2005 and 2015. The analysis is based on the international Nordcare survey and draws on the subsample of respondents working in Swedish home care 2005 and 2015 (n = 371). The data were analysed with bivariate and multivariate methods. The results suggest that, overall, the work situation of home‐care workers was worse in 2015 compared to 2005. For example, those surveyed in 2015 reported meeting a larger number of clients per day, receiving less support from their supervisors, and having less time to discuss difficult situations with colleagues and considerably less scope to affect the planning of their daily work. Care workers in 2015 were also more mentally exhausted than those surveyed in 2005. In addition, the workers in 2015 experienced an accumulation of work‐related problems. Deteriorating working conditions could be related to cutbacks and organisational reforms, and evidence suggests that home‐care workers are paying a high price for ageing‐in‐place policies. Improvements of the work situation in home care are necessary not only to ensure the quality of care for older people, but also to ensure workers’ well‐being and to recruit and retain care workers, and thus, to meet the future needs for home care in an ageing society.

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Section: Discussion: Understanding Changes In the Work Situation In Hsupporting

confidence: 92%

Care workers under pressure – A comparison of the work situation in Swedish home care 2005 and 2015

Strandell

2019

Health Soc Care Community

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“…Added to this is a growing workload, often developed in difficult working conditions, complex, painful, tricky and changing situations requiring emotional work. All this supposes home care workers use individual coping strategies that ensure and preserve those professional relationships with users that allow them to offer the established service (Weerdt and Baratta, 2015). Thus, an effective and safe quality activity for home-care workers and users requires specific organizational support oriented to their management.…”

Section: Home Care Workers At Crossroadsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Spanish home care workers between job vulnerability and happiness in times of crisis

Minguela-Recover

López-Fernández

López-Sánchez

et al. 2022

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Purpose This study aims to analyze the well-being experience of home care workers regardless of the service management model. It also aims to analyze their emotional experiences of their activity and working conditions. Design/methodology/approach This study, using a mixed qualitative and quantitative analysis, allows a combined analysis for a better understanding of the well-being experience of home care workers. Findings Home care workers experience intrinsic job satisfaction and demonstrate this with positive emotions regardless of their work situation. Practical implications Caring for the carer should be a business value. Measures oriented toward workers’ comfort generate greater happiness and commitment, which is automatically transferred to the quality of the care provided and reduces the psychosocial risks of their professional activity. Social implications Visualizing the social reality of an essential profession through research generates verifiable evidence that will help to improve the working conditions of home care workers in Spain. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this pioneering study in Spain introduces a greater understanding of how home care workers in Spain experience their work reality.

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“…Note that the French ergonomics school adopts a different definition for activity [64], [65]. Here, the term activity is used as a subtask or a small part of a task, which may be part of other tasks.…”

Section: B Ergonomic Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Psychotropic Drugs as a Performance Influencing Factor on Human Reliability Assessment

et al. 2020

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The increasing use/abuse of psychotropic drugs is an alarming social phenomenon with repercusions in many areas, especially in reliability engineering. The aim of this paper is to present a method developed by a multidisciplinary team composed of ergonomists, psychiatrists, information technologists, and reliability engineers to quantitatively consider the impact of psychotropic drugs on the assessment of human reliability of Operation and Maintenance (O&M) personnel of a hydroelectric plant. To achieve the proposed objective, the first step was the identification of drugs that affect the psychic-cognitive/sensory and motor functions as a side effect and the frequency (probability of occurrence) of the effect. This was done mining public and private drug databases. A qualitative (symbolic) scale later translated into numerical values was used to quantify the impact of each drug on the affected functions. At the same time, O&M tasks were broken down into observable activity sequences, recording the frequency of each activity on each task (Task Analysis). Then, the relationship between each activity and the sensory-cognitive-motor psychic functions was established, based on the knowledge and experience of the team involved. Again a qualitative (symbolic) scale was defined and later transformed into a numerical scale. As a result, the first version of a drug effect-task knowledge database (KDB) was built with the symbolic and numerical values assigned to all relationships between the different model elements. Although the KDB needs to be systematically reviewed and updated by a broader network of ergonomists and psychiatrists, it has served as proof of concept and a starting point for the development of a human risk management tool for hydroelectric power plants. The last step was to calculate a new Performance Shaping Factor (PSF) due to Psychotropic Drugs Use (PDU), for each drug in each of the O&M tasks. In a preliminary assessment of the inclusion of PDU-PSF with three common methods of Human Reliability Assessment (HRA), we found an increased risk of human failure ranging from approximately 15% to 35%, depending on the HRA method. The case study used to illustrate the method considered a routine operator inspection task using an antidepressant drug. The proposed method can be updated for new drugs and can be refined/customized for other high-risk human activities such as oil and gas and petrochemical industries, nuclear power plants, aviation, and surgery, among others. INDEX TERMS Human error analysis, reliability, task analysis, psychotropic drugs, human reliability.

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Changes in working conditions for home healthcare workers and impacts on their work activity and on their emotions

Cited by 9 publications

References 17 publications

Care workers under pressure – A comparison of the work situation in Swedish home care 2005 and 2015

Care workers under pressure – A comparison of the work situation in Swedish home care 2005 and 2015

The Spanish home care workers between job vulnerability and happiness in times of crisis

The Effect of Psychotropic Drugs as a Performance Influencing Factor on Human Reliability Assessment

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