Window work: Screen-based eldercare and professional precarity at the welfare frontier

Abstract

Focus: Digital technologies have become essential components in the organisa­tion and delivery of elder care. With this presentation, we want to contribute to the study and discussion of the role and effects of digitally mediated care solutions in situated care practices among older adults in Denmark.

Methods: This presentation is based on 4 months of ethnographic fieldwork. The researchers participated in- and observed digitally mediated health/home care visits and digitally mediated rehabilitation programs in homes, in training centres, at cultural activities and in health care and political forums where digitalisation of elder care is discussed. Furthermore the researchers conducted interviews with elderly citizens, healthcare professionals, municipal leaders and volunteers. The research took place on the island of Ærø, Denmark during the early phases of the corona crisis between June and September 2020.

Result and Discussion: In the presentation we highlight how a group of healthcare professionals attempt to perform their care work with and through screens, and how this work is both facilitated and curtailed by the functionalities, materiality and design features of particular screen technologies. With the concept of ‘window work’, we aim to stress how using screens to establish a virtual meeting point between citizens and healthcare professionals is no easy feat, but a material, embodied and technical practice that requires health workers to develop new skills and competencies. By changing the possibilities for care delivery, the screens pose a challenge to established and routinised embodied forms of care and, thus, raise important questions about what kinds of healthcare professionalism needs to be cultivated alongside the implementation of screens.

Keywords: digital technologies, home health visits, elderly care, screens, tele care.