Autrefois, les soins aux ainé.e.saîné.e.s étaient surtout assurés par des femmes non rémunérées anonymes, chez elles. Celles-ci étant entrées sur le marché du travail, beaucoup de ces soins sont maintenant assurés par des préposés aux bénéficiaires (PAB), surtout féminins. Avec l'introduction massive de la gestion par indicateurs dans les organismes publics, c'est une forme de silence organisationnel qui apparaît : ce travail demeure invisible. Mais quel est le mécanisme précis de cette invisibilisation ? Nous avons observé le travail de 37 PAB de 6 résidences ontariennes et effectué des entrevues. Contrairement à sa prescription, le travail des PAB est en grande partie collectif et la documentation réalisée est très contraignante, entrant même en concurrence avec les activités de soins directs. Les PAB sont parfois forcées d'omettre des données démontrant la difficulté du travail, créant un cercle vicieux où elles n'obtiennent pas les ressources nécessaires, et doivent donc escamoter encore plus l'activité de documentation.
Leadership in long-term care is a burgeoning field of research, particularly that which is focused on enabling point of care staff to provide high-quality and responsive healthcare. In this article, we focus on the relatively important role that leadership plays in enabling the conditions for high-quality long-term care. Our methodological approach involved a rapid in-depth ethnography undertaken by an interdisciplinary team across eight public and non-profit long-term care homes in Canada, where we conducted over 1,000 hours of observations and 275 formal and informal interviews with managers, staff, residents, family members and volunteers. Guiding our analysis post hoc is the LEADS in a Caring Environment framework. We mapped key promising leadership practices identified by our analysis and discuss how these can inform the development of leadership standards across staff and management in long-term care.
To explore the social organization of food provision in publicly funded and regulated long-term care facilities.Observations were conducted, along with 90 interviews with residents, families, and health providers in two Southern Ontario sites using rapid site-switching ethnography within a feminist political economy framework as part of an international, interdisciplinary study investigating healthy ageing.Food is purchased within a daily $7.80/per resident allotment, limiting high quality choices, which is further problematized by privatization of food services. Funding restrictions also result in low staffing levels, creating tensions in aligning with other Ministry mandated tasks such as bathing, and documenting: competing demands often lead to rushed meals. Regulations, primarily set in response to scandals and to ensure appropriate measured nutrition, reinforce the problem. Further, regulations regarding set meal times result in lack of resident agency, which is compounded by fixed menu options and seating arrangements in one common dining room. Rather than being viewed as an important part of resident socialization, food is reduced to a medicalized task, organized within a climate of cost-containment.Findings warrant Ministry financial support for additional staff and for food provision. Policy changes are also required to give primacy to this population's quality of life.
Drawing on survey responses from 948 personal support workers providing care in long-term residential facilities in three Canadian provinces, and from 1574 responses to a comparable survey in four ...
Rural Ageing provides an in-depth critical analysis of the ways to ensure that rural settings are places in which older adults can flourish, as well as identifying barriers that can lead to exclusion. In the book, authors speak to the connections of older adults to rural places and how identities of older adults are created and re-created in interaction with the landscapes that are integral to their lives. They also consider ageing in the context of important people in the lives of adults as they reach very old age and the challenges in providing services to older rural adults in widely dispersed communities and in supporting the caregivers. Furthermore, the authors address questions of how communities foster social engagement and connections and undertake critical analyses of community-level influences on inclusion and support of older adults. They cast light on the varied, and often hidden, nature of disadvantage experienced by older rural residents as well as how community settings may create contexts that are ‘age-friendly’ and inclusive.
Paramedics respond to acute medical and trauma emergencies in the community and transport patients to emergency departments (ED). In some cases, paramedics are not only attending calls for mental health and psychosocial care but are also connecting individuals with more appropriate services to address their needs. This study qualitatively explores to what extent there are promising practices to be learned from paramedic services that are connecting patients to mental health and psychosocial programming. The study is organised as follows. In terms of the methods, we conducted a critical ethnographic case study of mental health and psychosocial care within paramedic services in Ontario, Canada. Interviews were conducted with frontline paramedics (n = 31), paramedic services management (n = 5), educators at paramedic college programmes (n = 5) and Base Hospital physicians/directors (n = 5). Work observations were also performed in three paramedic services, with multiple crews across different shifts (n ~90 hr). The study findings outline three promising practices: diversion programmes that transfer patients to a destination other than the ED; crisis response teams that attend calls identified as involving mental health and community paramedicine programmes including referral programmes. We outline the social, political and economic conditions in which these programmes were established and are provided. We also describe the conditions required to enable connecting patients to non-ED supports. The benefits of implementing specific programming for mental health-related calls within paramedic services are discussed, as well as the importance of reaching beyond the prehospital and mental healthcare system to comprehensively and preventatively address mental health needs. Tensions are explored related to running programmatic interventions for mental health by paramedic services. We conclude by noting some public policy-level challenges including the need to focus more broadly on prevention and address the social determinants of health to aid the de-escalation of distress.
Multi-sectoral, interdisciplinary health research is increasingly recognizing integrated knowledge translation (iKT) as essential. It is characterized by diverse research partnerships, and iterative knowledge engagement, translation processes and democratized knowledge production. This paper reviews the methodological complexity and decision-making of a large iKT project called Seniors - Adding Life to Years (SALTY), designed to generate evidence to improve late life in long-term care (LTC) settings across Canada. We discuss our approach to iKT by reviewing iterative processes of team development and knowledge engagement within the LTC sector. We conclude with a brief discussion of the important opportunities, challenges, and implications these processes have for LTC research, and the sector more broadly
