New working conditions and consequences on activity of home healthcare workers

Abstract

Home healthcare is steadily growing in Europe. There are a number of reasons for this development: aging population, rising hospital costs, preference to stay in one's own home. Nevertheless, it has been known that home healthcare workers are frequently exposed to a variety of potentially serious occupational hazards. Furthermore, emotional labor is frequently high in this profession. This paper describes an ergonomic study conducted at a home healthcare service. The research focuses on analyzing working conditions of home healthcare aides and nurses, as well as the impacts of their work in terms of job satisfaction, well-being, emotions at work, relationships with the others and occupational stress. The study show that employee strategies are specifically centered around preserving the relationship between patients and workers and coping with the job demands. This paper also shows that home healthcare workers express emotions and conceal them from others. Finally, recommendations discussed with the manager and workers to improve working conditions in this sector led to practical proposals: for example, implementing certain equipment items better suited to difficult care, encouraging assistance between healthcare workers when operations require this through adequate organizational measures, extending work emotion-focused discussion groups with management involvement.

The role of work intensification in intention to stay: A study of personal support workers in home and community care in Ontario, Canada

“…In Canada and most other countries globally, an ageing-in-place approach to elderly care, early hospital discharges and a shortage of beds in long-term care institutions have led to an increased demand for home and community care services (Colombo et al, 2011;Genet et al, 2013;Keefe et al, 2011;Van de Weerdt and Baratta, 2012). In this context, retention of personal support workers (PSWs) has become an important challenge for the employing organisations in the home and community care sector.…”

Health and safety matters! Associations between organizational practices and personal support workers’ life and work stress in Ontario, Canada

“…Home and community care sector is one of the fastest growing sectors globally and most prominently in mature industrialized countries [ 1 – 3 ]. With the population aging, the preference to stay in one’s own home, and ongoing shortages of care workers [ 3 – 7 ], has resulted in an increased demand for home and community care services particularly for the care services provided by personal support workers (PSWs) [ 8 , 9 ]. There is similarly a high need for elder care in nursing homes in mature industrialized countries [ 10 , 11 ].…”

“…There is no universally accepted terminology for the PSW occupation. For example, they are called health support workers in the U.K. [ 15 ], home care workers [ 16 , 17 ] or home health care aides in the U.S. [ 18 , 19 ], home health care workers or aides in Europe [ 7 ], home care workers in Japan [ 3 ] and home care attendants in Taiwan [ 20 ]. In Canada, they used to be called home support workers [ 1 ] or visiting homemakers [ 21 ] though now they are more commonly referred to as personal support workers [ 12 , 22 , 23 ].…”

“…The purpose of this paper is to present evidence on the associations between PSWs life and work stress and organizational practices, perceptions of support at work and preference for hours of work. Research shows that PSWs experience stress due to the nature of their work and work environments in Canada and elsewhere including U.S., UK, Europe, and Japan [ 3 , 7 , 11 – 13 , 15 – 17 , 21 , 24 ]. Similarly, nurses, nursing aides, nursing assistants and nursing health care staff employed in elderly care in long-term care facilities/ nursing homes in Canada [ 25 ], Japan [ 26 ], Taiwan [ 20 ] Switzerland [ 27 ], Finland [ 28 ], U.S. [ 29 ] and UK [ 30 ] report stress at work.…”