Program and Year: 2021 Master’s Studentship Award
Project Title: Discovering and Dreaming: Long-term Care Healthcare Aide Perceptions of Structural Empowerment
Department: College of Nursing
Faculty: Rady Faculty of Health Sciences (Supervisor: Dr. Judith Scanlan)
Synopsis:
The long-term care (LTC) sector has struggled to maintain quality resident care for decades. During the COVID-19 pandemic these challenges have been highlighted and made worse, resulting in significant resident illness and death. LTC healthcare aide (HCA) empowerment is a prerequisite of quality care in LTC and represents an important modifiable cause of the problem. HCAs provide up to 90% of direct resident care but are often subject to low pay, minimal non-standardized educational preparation, inadequate continuing education, high burden of work, and little to no professional authority or autonomy. In Canada HCAs tend to be middle-aged or older women from ethnic and racialized minorities. They endure hostile work environments and high rates of work-related injuries. The compounding effect of these social and structural issues predispose LTC HCAs to high levels of job dissatisfaction, burnout and turnover rates between 60-170% annually. Despite the important position and role of LTC HCAs in providing quality care to residents, little research has been devoted to understanding the influences of organizational structure on them and their empowerment, and the care they provide.
What will the impacts/benefits of this research be to Manitoba/Canada?
The purpose of this study is to develop a thorough description of HCA perspectives on how organizational structures have or do empower them and the desired dreams state for these structures moving forward. This study will explore the perspectives of LTC HCAs through focused interviews with individual HCAs. It will seek to find out (a) the relationship between power, opportunity, and proportion structures in residential LTC settings and HCA empowerment, (b) the relative importance of power, opportunity, and proportion structures in influencing HCA empowerment, and (c) promising practices and areas for improvement of power, opportunity, and proportion structures in residential LTC settings.
What do you hope to achieve at the end of your Research Manitoba funded project?
This study will make a difference because by prioritizing the perspectives and needs of LTC HCAs, this study will use the type of egalitarian approach needed to begin the process of positively influencing HCA perceptions of the value they bring to their organizations and the importance of prioritizing their empowerment needs to achieve optimal quality of care outcomes for residents. This study will also make a difference because it is designed with scale up in mind and will provide the evidence needed to get government and funding agencies to commit to supporting organization change initiatives that will ultimately help improve the care of older adults in LTC by empowering the staff who provide the bulk of their care.
How did the funds you received from Research Manitoba advance this research and/or your career?
The funds I am receiving from Research Manitoba are helping me to advance my research and my career by reducing the financial barriers of graduate school, thereby allowing me to focus more fully on my learning and research work. I am honoured to be listed among other exceptional researcher and emerging researcher alumni for this funding and have been encouraged to learn others believe in the importance of my research.