Shaping social situations: A hidden aspect of care work in nursing homes

A significant aspect of care work in nursing homes involves dealing with emotional responses such as anxiety, fear, pain, depression and anger on the part of residents and their families. Previous care and nursing research on this topic centers around dyadic relationships and does not provide useful conceptualizations of how care workers actively deal with the social situations they encounter as part of their work. Drawing on ethnographic field work and interviews conducted in two Norwegian nursing homes, this article aims to describe and conceptualize a previously neglected aspect of good care work: the active shaping of social situations in order to lessen uneasy feelings of residents and their families. Three episodes of good work are described to illustrate how social situations can be shaped. Strategies include such actions as timing events, regulating one's presence, and composing social groups. The concluding section discusses some implications for nursing home management.