1 CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy, New York City, New York, USA.
2 Queens College, New York City, New York, USA.
Qual Health Res. 2019 Feb;29(3):382-392. doi: 10.1177/1049732318800461. Epub 2018 Sep 28.
While many types of health care workers experience patient death, home care workers do so under vastly different social and economic circumstances. When a client dies, home care workers often lose both a close relationship and a job. Though research suggests that health care workers' grief may frequently be disenfranchised, there is no in-depth study of the mechanisms that disenfranchise home care workers' grief specifically. To address this gap, our study used focus groups and peer interviews between home care workers in New York City. We describe four interrelated grief strategies they employ to navigate social and employer-based "grieving rules." Our findings suggest that home care workers' grief is disenfranchised via employer and societal underestimations of their relationships with clients and their losses when clients die, particularly job loss. Building on our findings, we suggest alterations to agency practices and home care systems to improve support for workers.
虽然许多类型的医护人员都会经历患者死亡，但家庭护理人员在截然不同的社会和经济环境下经历这一过程。当客户去世时，家庭护理人员通常会失去亲密的关系和工作。尽管研究表明医护人员的悲痛可能经常被剥夺，但没有深入研究具体剥夺家庭护理人员悲痛的机制。为了弥补这一空白，我们的研究使用了纽约市家庭护理人员的焦点小组和同行访谈。我们描述了他们在处理社会和雇主基于的“悲伤规则”时采用的四种相互关联的悲伤策略。我们的研究结果表明，家庭护理人员的悲痛被雇主和社会低估了他们与客户的关系以及客户去世时的损失，尤其是失去工作。基于我们的研究结果，我们建议对机构实践和家庭护理系统进行修改，以改善对工人的支持。
