Abstract
ABSTRACT Home health aides (HHA) have high sickness absence while the need for home care services is rapidly growing. The aim of this study was to derive new conceptual understandings by identifying, describing and interpreting key concepts across qualitative studies on how HHA experience their occupational health related to their working conditions. A qualitative ethnographic meta-synthesis was used as a method to analyze 27 articles included from systematic searches in CINAHL, MEDLINE and PsycINFO. HHA experience physical strenuous work task demands in combination with unfortunate organizational conditions in an uncontrolled and ever-changing psychosocial and physical working environment as the main obstacle to their occupational health, although many positive presence factors with opposite effects were reported. More research is needed to investigate whether physical demanding work tasks can have positive effects on HHA’s occupational health by reorganizing their work while preserving patients’ empowerment at their home.
Highlights
The need for home care services is rapidly growing due to an increasing elderly population, earlier discharge from hospital and clients’ preference of being treated at home
Based on the presented considerations, we investigated how home health aides experience their occupational health
Articles that contain home health aides’ perspectives and personal experiences of occupational health related to working conditions; 5
Summary
The need for home care services is rapidly growing due to an increasing elderly population, earlier discharge from hospital and clients’ preference of being treated at home. The objectives of this study were to summarise peer-reviewed literature on how home health aides experience their occupational health and conduct an ethnographic meta-synthesis with the aim of identifying and describing key concepts across studies. Methods: A qualitative ethnographic meta-synthesis was used to develop new insights into home health aides’ occupational experiences. By using this method, we directed attention to the interpretation of studies, development of concepts and expansion and specification of theories that concern these concepts. The review of these sources identified four key concepts as important to gain an understanding of occupational health among home health aides: exposure to physical demands, physical environmental factors, organisational conditions of employment and psychosocial working environment. In order to increase employee’s well-being, create a healthier workplace that provides well-functioning and high-quality home care services and cope with future health challenges, more investigations into the organisation of home care are needed
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