Aims: Limitations in the workforce’s capacity to deliver care to older adults (e.g., staffing ratios, turnover) is inherently linked to systemic flaws in the quality and safety of aged care. These failures reinforce a stigma of working in aged care. We argue that stigma reduces the perceived value of working in aged care and may have negative ramifications on the recruitment of health professionals in aged care. Drawing on dirty work and stigma theory, our mixed-methods study investigates the nature and implications of stigma on health professionals’ intentions to work in aged care.
Methods: We employed a path analysis to test whether health professionals’ (n=159) perceptions of poor occupational conditions and taint associated with aged care work negatively predict their work intentions. We further applied a linguistic tool to examine how health professionals (n=168) may reproduce stigma through aligning themselves with devaluing discourses about aged care.
Results: Findings revealed that perceptions of physical taint predicted lower willingness to perform aged care work. Perceptions of poor occupational conditions, social taint, and moral taint predicted greater social devaluation of aged care, and in turn, lower willingness to work in institutional aged care. Our linguistic analysis demonstrated that a majority of health professionals reinforce the stigma of working in aged care and aligned with negative societal discourses about aged care workers, work, and institutions.
Conclusions: Stigma has negative implications on the workforce and care delivery. Our study provides avenues for refining more successful interventions to overcome systemic flaws through strengthening workforce capacity.