Thank you for your generous support of the Douglas K. Candland Undergraduate Research Fund. It has allowed me to pursue my research and examine CNA care work in the rise of privatized staffing.

Over one million nursing home residents in the United States are in the direct care of certified nursing assistants (CNAs), who remain at the bottom of the medical hierarchy. CNAs assist elderly and disabled people with activities of daily living such as toileting, bathing, eating, dressing and mobility. With a turnover rate of about 78%, nursing homes are in a constant state of solution-seeking to keep CNAs and increase the quality of care received by the residents. One of the solutions to chronic understaffing across the nation is acquiring staff through agencies that contract CNAs to multiple facilities. As I have worked as a CNA in a nursing home for the last two years, I noticed growing tensions between the in-house staff and agency staff.

This research adds to an untapped area of research—how agency staffing may be exacerbating the already impossible and underpaid labor expected of CNAs. As the elderly population increases and the inevitability of aging influences our lives, the demand for caregiving only rises. Using feminist perspectives to inform my analysis, I explore the ways that gender, race and class intersect to devalue care work and how these existing forms of exploitation are compounded with the complex dynamics of agency staffing that make it difficult for CNAs to have a substantial career.

To understand the intricacies of caregiving, I look to the beholders of caregiving knowledge— CNAs. My research centers on qualitative interviews conducted with eight CNAs working at a facility in central Pennsylvania. My findings show that agency staffing is exacerbating the invisible emotional labor that CNAs perform as a part of their caregiving demands, and this labor is compounded among identity-based factors. It is likely that we or somebody we know has a family member living in a nursing home, therefore it is paramount that we restructure the nursing home industry and make caregiving a social priority.

Otherwise, who will be there to care for us in our old age when we are no longer able to care for ourselves?

Once again, I wish to express my deepest gratitude for your continued support of this fund and making these research opportunities available to Bucknell students like myself.