The need for flexibility when negotiating professional boundaries in the context of home care, dementia and end of life

Datos Bibliográficos

ID11200546
AutoresRuth Abrams (0000-0002-2974-7859, Kingston University, autor de correspondencia), Tushna Vandrevala (0000-0002-1140-8445, Kingston University), Kritika Samsi (0000-0001-5961-6086, King's College London), Jill Manthorpe (0000-0001-9006-1410, King's College London)
Año2019
Volumen39
Número9
Páginas1976-1995
Fecha de publicación2019-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAgeing and Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0144-686X • E-ISSN: 1469-1779
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0144686x18000375
OpenAlexW2796670080
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas15
Referencias citadas21

Professional boundaries may help care staff to clarify their role, manage risk and safeguard vulnerable clients. Yet there is a scarcity of evidence on how professional boundaries are negotiated in a non-clinical environment ( e.g. the home) by the home-care workforce in the context of complex care needs ( e.g. dementia, end-of-life care). Through analysis of semi-structured interviews, we investigated the experiences of home-care workers (N = 30) and their managers (N = 13) working for a range of home-care services in the South-East and London regions of England in 2016–17. Findings from this study indicate that home-care workers and their managers have clear perceptions of job role boundaries, yet these are modified in dementia care, particularly at end of life which routinely requires adaptability and flexibility. As a lone worker in a client's home, there may be challenges relating to safeguarding and risk to both clients and workers. The working environment exacerbates this, particularly during end-of-life care where emotional attachments to both clients and their family may affect the maintenance of professional boundaries. There is a need to adopt context-specific, flexible and inclusive attitudes to professional boundaries, which reconceptualise these to include relational care and atypical workplace conventions. Pre-set boundaries which safeguard clients and workers through psychological contracts may help to alleviate to some extent the pressure of the emotional labour undertaken by home-care workers

Business · Context (archaeology) · Dementia · Disease · Flexibility (engineering) · Management · Negotiation · Political science · Professional boundaries · Public relations · Safeguarding · Sociology · Workforce · Emotional Labor in Professions · Employment and Welfare Studies · Geriatric Care and Nursing Homes · Medicine · Nursing · Psychology