(In)visible materialities in the context of dementia care

Abstract

Seemingly mundane materialities are intertwined with important, but often neglected, care interactions. It has been argued that if healthcare professionals paid more attention to the roles materialities can have, everyday routines could become important occasions for care. In response to such proposals, we argue that it is relevant to examine how materialities are currently understood. In this article, we explore materialities as part of work in a dementia unit. Using abstracted illustrations of everyday materialities to elicit reflections, we conducted 11 individual interviews with certified nursing assistants. Through phenomenographic analysis we explain our findings as three different categories conceptualising understandings of materialities as: ‘tools for care’, ‘a set of principles for care’ and ‘caring relationships’. Our analysis indicates that understanding materialities as instruments was reinforced and made visible through the healthcare organisation while understanding materialities as part of specific relationships with residents appeared informal and less visible. How materialities were understood seemed to have several implications for residents. While care practices could benefit from nursing assistants’ abilities to alternate between ways of understanding materialitites, such competence seemed dependent on how professional care was organised, structured and materialised.

Markings: Boundaries and Borders in Dementia Care Units

“…Buse and Twigg (2018) have pointed to how clothing and handbags play roles in maintaining a sense of self for those with dementia. This aligns with the growing scholarship concerning "materialities of care", which calls attention to everyday material things within various care practices as something that sheds light on important, but often neglected, interactions (Buse, Martin, and Nettleton 2018;Cleeve, Borell, and Rosenberg 2019;Cleeve et al 2018;Latimer 2018;Mol, Moser, and Pols 2010). In this essay, I use the term "materialities" to refer to that which is tangibleincluding bodies, objects, and physical placesavoiding definitive distinctions between the human and non-human.…”

“…It might also provide insight into the implications of framing everyday activities as tasks in professional care (Latimer 2018, 385). In a previous study, my colleagues and I analyzed how nursing assistants in a dementia care unit understood materialities in their work (Cleeve, Borell, and Rosenberg 2019). Our analysis suggested that the organization and structure of care reinforced the understanding of material things as instruments for conducting particular tasks.…”

“…As Moser (2010, 278) writes, daily life with dementia is not about curing a disease but about finding ways to make each day as good as possible. In line with this, some researchers, explicitly or implicitly, begin to draw attention to materiality in dementia care (Buse and Twigg 2018;Cleeve, Borell, and Rosenberg 2019;Hyd en 2014;Saunders et al 2012). For instance, Hyd en has described how the particular set up of objects such as cutting boards, knives, and brussels sprouts can facilitate collaboration between staff and people with dementia when preparing a meal.…”

Material Citizenship: An ethnographic study exploring object–person relations in the context of people with dementia in care homes

“…Other health sociologists have argued that by paying more attention to materiality, ‘everyday routines could become important occasions for care’ (Cleeve et al, 2020, p. 126). Our analysis confirms this and takes it further by showing how material practices, specifically access to and use of functional objects, have significance for social citizenship.…”

Dispensing care?: The dosette box and the status of low‐fi technologies within older people’s end‐of‐life caregiving practices

“…As studies about ordinary technologies focus on the ongoing, emergent, processural and affective qualities of interacting with these technologies, such enquires have also re‐orientated definitions care from being a functional task or moral orientation to a set of practices and relations (Buse et al, 2018; Mol et al, 2010; Winance, 2010). What remains underexplored, however, is the way that older people themselves engage with technologies to care for others and their self (Cleeve et al, 2020).…”