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

Home healthcare is steadily growing in many countries. 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 analyzing working conditions of aides and nurses, as well as the impacts of their work in terms of job satisfaction, emotions at work, relationships with the others, and occupational stress. The study shows that employee strategies are specifically centered around preserving the relationships with patients, and coping with the job demands. It also shows that workers express emotions and conceal them from others. Finally, recommendations discussed with the manager and workers to improve working conditions led to practical proposals: e.g. implementing certain equipment items better suited to difficult care, encouraging assistance between workers when operations require this through adequate organisational measures, extending work emotion-focused discussion groups with management involvement.