Emotional Economies of Scale: Organizational Structure of Emotional Labor in For-profit Home Health

• In Event: 2184 - Section on Medical Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 12. Caregiving and Emotional Labor

Abstract

In-home health care is an important and growing component of elder care in the US that warrants more attention. Home health aides and other front-line caregivers provide important direct patient care, yet they often lack training, are poorly paid, or often cycle rapidly through different employment settings. This study seeks to shed light on this field by examining the organization, training, and management of home health care in a large for-profit company in the industry. This study relies on a year-long organizational ethnography of a leading home-health provider that is in the process of transitioning from for-profit to non-profit status, as well as 30 interviews with directors, managers, clinicians, and aides across three practice areas within the company. The study argues that while existing research in emotion work and care work emphasize relational aspects of caregiving, emotional work can be leveraged at the level of management to create economies of scale, reducing labor costs of caregiving and while increasing the companies’ services. Understanding this process offers insight into the growth of home health care and its expanding role in healthcare and medicine more broadly.

Author

• Tina Wu, University of Pennsylvania