‘We just do the dirty work’: dealing with incontinence, courtesy stigma and the low occupational status of carework in long‐term aged care facilities

Abstract

This study provides insights into the ways in which tacit beliefs and values about incontinence, cleanliness and contamination may affect the social organisation and delivery of care in long-term aged care facilities. Nurse leaders should challenge the stigma and devaluation of carework and careworkers, and reframe carework as 'dignity work'.

Nursing students’ experiences of delivering dementia friends sessions to peers

“…Their concerns about quality of care echoed those in the literature, for example in the need for a person-centred approach (Brooker and Latham 2016). They were seemingly unaffected by 'courtesy stigma' often associated with work with older people (Ostaszkiewicz, O'Connell and Dunning 2016). Improved nurse well-being is associated with reduced risk of burnout and with higher quality patient care (Fearon and Nicol 2011).…”

A conceptual model of the risk of elder abuse posed by incontinence and care dependence

“…For example, one staff member believed other people would be disgusted by her role because she had contact with some “unspeakable matter.” Other staff said, “we just do the dirty work.” Staff felt it was important to emotionally distance themselves from their feeling of disgust when handling residents' urine or faeces or other bodily fluids. A staff member stated she had to “take herself [metaphorically] away from it [incontinence]” to deal with the disgust she felt from having to deal with a resident's incontinence, as she attempted to perform her role (Ostaszkiewicz, O'Connell, & Dunning, ).…”

Dying on television versus dying in intensive care units following withdrawal of life support: how normative frames may traumatise the bereaved

“…Identified elsewhere as ‘doing the dirty work’, nursing staff and nursing aids responsibility is to keep the unit sanitised were the ‘unboundedness’ can be managed (Ostaszkiewicz et al . ). It could be argued that the nursing staff thereby hid the physicality of the unbounded body much as it is erased from television.…”