Home is where the (home care) worker is
A human-centered exploration of home care in the bathroom
Time: Thu 2026-04-09 09.00
Location: T2 (Jacobssonsalen), Hälsovägen 11C, Huddinge
Language: Swedish
Subject area: Technology and Health
Doctoral student: Anna Klara Stenberg Gleisner , Ergonomi
Opponent: Professor Susanne Iwarsson, Lund University, Department of health sciences
Supervisor: Universitetslektor Catherine M. Trask, Ergonomi; Universitetslektor Linda Rose, Ergonomi; Professor Mikael Forsman, Ergonomi; Professor Jörgen Eklund, Ergonomi
QC 2026-03-16
Abstract
Introduction:
The demographics of the world's population are rapidly changing. Many elderly people will have to age-in-place and receive care in their own home, and their homes will become work environments for homecare workers. Within the home, the bathroom is a challenging workplace wheremany of the heavy lifting and transferring of clients take place; these high physical workloads limit the sustainability of the home care workforce. Bathroom design, including assistive devices, layout and available space, can play an important role for home care workers to facilitate work tasks and enable the clients to help themselves, but it is not clear to what extent.
Aim: The overall aim of this thesis was to investigate, using a human-centered lens, how the home bathroom design affects work and bathroom activities forhome care workers and clients. To address this aim, two studies were conducted.
Methods: The first study was a qualitative interview study consisting of 21 interviews with participants from the perspective of a client, health careworker, or care organization. The interviews aimed to gather information and identify challenges, needs, and gaps for home care bathroom tasks. The second study was experimental, comparing three bathroom designs: a standard nursing home bathroom and two apartment-like bathrooms; one equipped with common assistive devices and one unequipped. Trunk and arm posture and movement data were collected using IMU-sensors from 18 care workers conducting bathroom tasks in the three bathrooms. Further, the frequency and duration of contact with assistive devices was documented via video recording, and interviews were conducted with the participating care workers about their experience of usability and suitability when assisting a client.
Findings: The findings from study 1 identified important factors for enabling both independent living for clients and a sustainable work environment for health care workers. These factors included an adequate amount of space, access to assistive devices, and regular risk assessments to recognize changing needs. In study 2, the nursing home bathroom showed significantly higher 50th & 90th percentile left upper arm angular velocity than the equipped bathroom. Contacts with assistive devices were consistently longer and more frequent in the equipped bathroom than in the nursing home bathroom, which was in turn higher than the unequipped bathroom.
Conclusions: Workers, administrators, and users reported that the biggest challenges are lack of adequate space, lack of assistive devices, and lack of regular assessments to match needs. Assistive devices alone cannot replace space; worker postural and movement exposures are not improved by additional space and provision of assistive devices as anticipated. In both studies care workers reported considerable stress in small spaces regardless of the presence of assistive devices.