Reciprocity of Care: Emotional Labor of Care Attendants in Elderly Dementia Day Care Center
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
Ting, Ju-Chiao
Abstract
As population in Taiwan is aging rapidly, clients with dementia increase steadily. Elderly day care services become one of the most important projects in the long-term care policy. However, caring the demented elderly is more difficult than caring the disabled elderly. The emotional labor experiences of care attendants in elderly dementia day care centers still need more research. Therefore, this thesis aimed to (1) understand care attendants’ emotional labor experiences, and (2) care attendants’ feelings about organizational environment and culture. My research gathered materials through document analysis, participant observation, and in-depth interview with 9 care attendants from two elderly dementia day care centers in the northern section and central section of Taiwan, respectively. I took turns observing two centers, and finally conducted for a total of 305 hours of participant observation. The research findings emerged as follows: (1) Care attendants’ emotional labor experiences were complex. First, they felt fresh and fun when people with dementia made unexpected movements; nevertheless, care attendants were also scared, sad, or self-condemned when conflicts or accidents suddenly happened. Second, in order to enter the world of people with dementia, care attendants performed surface acting and deep acting by idealization and dramatization. Sometimes when care attendants could not work with clients, they choose to care another person and changed to another space, so as to manage their negative emotions. The comforts from clients also showed that the demented elderly still had the abilities to care about others. Sometimes when care attendants could not regulate their emotions, they made murmur or burst out in anger at the end of their patience. (2) Due to the relatively vague criteria to define whether the demented elderly were patients or normal people, it was hard for care attendants to follow feeling rules. Therefore, if managers considered individual differences of care attendants, applied indirect supervision instead of direct blame, and flexibly revised the range of feeling rules, care attendants felt less emotional labor pressure from the organizational management. Under the special working condition to care about others and build long-term relationships, it was concluded that the core concerns of emotional labor were both job-centered and person-centered, and the caring process of emotional labor was reciprocity, which meant that care attendants not only made efforts to manage emotions, but also received emotional supports from external resources. Finally, according to the person-centered concern, this research pointed out 7 practical suggestions, including hardware facilities, team chemistry, client replacements, family communication, peer supervision, professional resources, enhancement of acting ability, and awareness of symbols, and 3 policy recommendations on the aspects of vocational qualification, career ladder for promotions, and on-the-job training.
Subjects
dementia
elderly dementia day care center
care attendant
emotional labor
feeling rule
SDGs
Type
thesis
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