Home health aides' experiences of their occupational health: a qualitative meta-synthesis

Home health aides (HHA) have high sickness absence while the need for home care services is rapidly growing. The aim of this study was to derive new conceptual understandings by identifying, describing and interpreting key concepts across qualitative studies on how HHA experience their occupational health related to their working conditions. A qualitative ethnographic meta-synthesis was used as a method to analyze 27 articles included from systematic searches in CINAHL, MEDLINE and PsycINFO. HHA experience physical strenuous work task demands in combination with unfortunate organizational conditions in an uncontrolled and ever-changing psychosocial and physical working environment as the main obstacle to their occupational health, although many positive presence factors with opposite effects were reported. More research is needed to investigate whether physical demanding work tasks can have positive effects on HHA's occupational health by reorganizing their work while preserving patients' empowerment at their home.