IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mcm/qseprr/429.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Visiting and Office Home Care Workers’ Occupational Health: An Analysis of Workplace Flexibility and Worker Insecurity Measures Associated with Emotional and Physical Health

Author

Listed:
  • Isik U. Zeytinoglu
  • Margaret Denton
  • Sharon Davies
  • M. Bianca Seaton
  • Jennifer Millen

Abstract

The home health care sector in Canada experienced major restructuring in the mid-1990s creating a variety of flexibilities for organizations and insecurities for workers. This paper examines the emotional and physical health consequences of employer flexibilities and worker insecurities on home health care workers. For emotional health the focus is on stress and for physical health the focus is on selfreported musculoskeletal disorders. Data come from our survey of home health care workers in a mid-sized city in Ontario, Canada. Data are analyzed separately for 990 visiting and 300 office workers. For visiting workers, results showed that none of the ‘objective’ flexibility/insecurity measures are associated with stress or musculoskeletal disorders controlling for other factors. However, ‘subjective’ flexibility/insecurity factors, i.e. feelings of job insecurity and labour market insecurity, are significantly and positively associated with stress. When stress is included in the analysis, for visiting workers stress mediates the effects of ‘subjective’ flexibility/insecurity with musculoskeletal disorders. For office workers, none of the objective flexibility/insecurity factors are associated with stress but subjective flexibility/insecurity factor of feelings of job insecurity is positively and significantly associated with stress. For office home care workers, work on call is negatively and significantly associated with musculoskeletal disorders. Feeling job insecurity is mediated through stress in affecting musculoskeletal disorders. Feeling labour market insecurity is significantly and positively associated with musculoskeletal disorders for office home care workers. Decision-makers in home care field are recommended to pay attention to insecurities felt by workers to reduce occupational health problems of stress and musculoskeletal disorders.

Suggested Citation

  • Isik U. Zeytinoglu & Margaret Denton & Sharon Davies & M. Bianca Seaton & Jennifer Millen, 2009. "Visiting and Office Home Care Workers’ Occupational Health: An Analysis of Workplace Flexibility and Worker Insecurity Measures Associated with Emotional and Physical Health," Quantitative Studies in Economics and Population Research Reports 429, McMaster University.
    • Handle: RePEc:mcm:qseprr:429
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/qsep/p/qsep429.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gianfranco DOMENIGHETTI & Barbara D'AVANZO & Brigitte BISIG, 1999. "Health Effects of Job Insecurity among Employees in Swiss General Population," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 9907, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    2. Margaret Denton & Isik Urla Zeytinoglu & Sharon Davies, 2003. "Organizational Change and the Health and Well-Being of Home Care Workers," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 110, McMaster University.
    3. Kurt Wetzel, 2005. "The Canadian Context," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Labour Relations and Health Reform, chapter 4, pages 86-90, Palgrave Macmillan.
    4. Kurt Wetzel, 2005. "Labour Relations and Health Reform," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-0-230-51462-1.
    5. Jane Aronson & Margaret Denton & Isik Zeytinoglu, 2004. "Market-Modelled Home Care in Ontario: Deteriorating Working Conditions and Dwindling Community Capacity," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 30(1), pages 111-125, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Isik U. Zeytinoglu & Margaret Denton & Sharon Davies & M. Bianca Seaton & Jennifer Millen, 2008. "Visiting and Office Home Care Workers’ Occupational Health: An Analysis of Workplace Flexibility and Worker Insecurity Measures Associated with Emotional and Physical Health," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 234, McMaster University.
    2. Margaret Denton & Isik Urla Zeytinoglu & Sharon Davies & Danielle Hunter, 2005. "Where Have All The Home Care Workers Gone?," Quantitative Studies in Economics and Population Research Reports 393, McMaster University.
    3. Zeytinoglu, Isik U. & Denton, Margaret & Davies, Sharon & Plenderleith, Jennifer Millen, 2009. "Casualized employment and turnover intention: Home care workers in Ontario, Canada," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 91(3), pages 258-268, August.
    4. Margaret Denton & Isik Urla Zeytinoglu & Sharon Davies & Danielle Hunter, 2005. "Where Have All The Home Care Workers Gone?," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 128, McMaster University.
    5. Zeytinoglu, Isik U. & Denton, Margaret & Brookman, Catherine & Plenderleith, Jennifer, 2014. "Task shifting policy in Ontario, Canada: Does it help personal support workers’ intention to stay?," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 179-186.
    6. Jane Aronson & Sheila M. Neysmith, 2006. "Obscuring the costs of home care: restructuring at work," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 20(1), pages 27-45, March.
    7. Petri Böckerman, 2004. "Perception of Job Instability in Europe," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 67(3), pages 283-314, July.
    8. Skinner, Mark W. & Rosenberg, Mark W., 2006. "Managing competition in the countryside: Non-profit and for-profit perceptions of long-term care in rural Ontario," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(11), pages 2864-2876, December.
    9. Alameddine, Mohamad & Laporte, Audrey & Baumann, Andrea & O'Brien-Pallas, Linda & Mildon, Barbara & Deber, Raisa, 2006. "'Stickiness' and 'inflow' as proxy measures of the relative attractiveness of various sub-sectors of nursing employment," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(9), pages 2310-2319, November.
    10. Mark W Skinner & Mark W Rosenberg, 2005. "Co-Opting Voluntarism? Exploring the Implications of Long-Term Care Reform for the Nonprofit Sector in Ontario," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 23(1), pages 101-121, February.
    11. Zeytinoglu, Isik U. & Denton, Margaret & Plenderleith, Jennifer Millen, 2011. "Flexible employment and nurses' intention to leave the profession: The role of support at work," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 149-157, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    home health care workers; stress; worker insecurity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
    • J28 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Safety; Job Satisfaction; Related Public Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mcm:qseprr:429. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/demcmca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.