The Gerontologist Podcast: Emotional Labor of Home Health Aides with Dr. Emily Franzosa

Dr. Degenholtz interviewed Dr. Emily Franzosa at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the James J. Peters VA Medical Center about her paper on the emotional labor of home health aides. Her paper, “Who’s Caring for Us?”: Understanding and Addressing the Effects of Emotional Labor on Home Health Aides’ Well-being, published in the December 2019 issue of The Gerontologist, reports on focus groups conducted with groups of aides, finding that being close and having trusting relationships with clients were important to aides’ emotional well-being.  The conversation highlighted the importance of recognizing emotional labor and the limitations of the current system that do not reward or even explicitly acknowledge the psychological toll that caring can have on paid caregivers.  Dr. Degenholtz talked to his mother about the people who have cared for their relatives, including his uncle and his grandmother, and tried to parse out what motivates people above and beyond pay to do this challenging work. Article (December 2019 Issue of The Gerontologist) Disclaimer: This interview does not represent the views of the US Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States government.