IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v343y2024ics0277953624000613.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Exhausting care: On the collateral realities of caring in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Rhodes, Tim
  • Ruiz Osorio, Maria Paula
  • Maldonado Martinez, Adriana
  • Restrepo Henao, Alexandra
  • Lancaster, Kari

Abstract

We explore care as a site of multiplicity and tension. Working with the qualitative interview accounts of nineteen health care workers in Colombia, we trace a narrative of ‘exhausting care’ in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Accounts relate exhausting care to working without break in response to extraordinary demand, heightened contagion concern, the pressures of caring in the face of anticipated death, and efforts to carry on caring in the face of constraint. We bring together the work of John Law (2010, 2011) on ‘collateral realities’ with Lauren Berlant’s (2011) thesis of ‘cruel optimism’ to explore care as a site of practice in which the promise of the good can also become materialised as harm, given structural conditions. Through the reflexive narrative of ‘carrying on’ in the face of being ‘worn down’ by care, a narrative which runs through health care worker accounts, we draw attention to the collateral realities of exhausting care as personal and political, at once a practice of endurance and extraction. We argue that the exhausting care that relates to the extraordinariness of the Covid-19 pandemic also resides in the ordinariness, and slower violence, of the everyday. The cruel optimism of care is a relation in which the labour of care reproduces a harmful situation.

Suggested Citation

  • Rhodes, Tim & Ruiz Osorio, Maria Paula & Maldonado Martinez, Adriana & Restrepo Henao, Alexandra & Lancaster, Kari, 2024. "Exhausting care: On the collateral realities of caring in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 343(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:343:y:2024:i:c:s0277953624000613
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.116617
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953624000613
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.116617?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paula Franklin & Anna Gkiouleka, 2021. "A Scoping Review of Psychosocial Risks to Health Workers during the Covid-19 Pandemic," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(5), pages 1-20, March.
    2. Mattingly, Cheryl, 1994. "The concept of therapeutic 'emplotment'," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 811-822, March.
    3. Sherman, Melina & Klinenberg, Eric, 2024. "Beyond burnout: Moral suffering among healthcare workers in the first COVID-19 surge," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 340(C).
    4. Rodriquez, Jason, 2023. "Reconfiguring the social organization of work in the intensive care unit: Changed relationships and new roles during COVID-19," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 317(C).
    5. Rhodes, Tim & Bernays, Sarah & Houmoller, Kathrin, 2010. "Parents who use drugs: Accounting for damage and its limitation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(8), pages 1489-1497, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Paula Franklin & Wouter Zwysen & Agnieszka Piasna, 2022. "Temporal Dimensions of Job Quality and Gender: Exploring Differences in the Associations of Working Time and Health between Women and Men," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(8), pages 1-18, April.
    2. Rhodes, Tim, 2018. "The becoming of methadone in Kenya: How an intervention's implementation constitutes recovery potential," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 201(C), pages 71-79.
    3. Mehwish Majeed & Muhammad Irshad & Jos Bartels, 2021. "The Interactive Effect of COVID-19 Risk and Hospital Measures on Turnover Intentions of Healthcare Workers: A Time-Lagged Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(20), pages 1-15, October.
    4. Mariela Loreto Lara-Cabrera & Moisés Betancort & C. Amparo Muñoz-Rubilar & Natalia Rodríguez Novo & Carlos De las Cuevas, 2021. "The Mediating Role of Resilience in the Relationship between Perceived Stress and Mental Health," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(18), pages 1-10, September.
    5. Rhodes, Tim & Bernays, Sarah & Terzic, Katarina Jankovic, 2009. "Medical promise and the recalibration of expectation: Hope and HIV treatment engagement in a transitional setting," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(6), pages 1050-1059, March.
    6. Daniela Converso & Andreina Bruno & Vincenza Capone & Lara Colombo & Alessandra Falco & Teresa Galanti & Damiano Girardi & Gloria Guidetti & Sara Viotti & Barbara Loera, 2021. "Working during a Pandemic between the Risk of Being Infected and/or the Risks Related to Social Distancing: First Validation of the SAPH@W Questionnaire," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(11), pages 1-14, June.
    7. Waldram, James B. & Hatala, Andrew R., 2015. "Latent and manifest empiricism in Q'eqchi' Maya healing: A case study of HIV/AIDS," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 9-16.
    8. Dumit, Joseph, 2006. "Illnesses you have to fight to get: Facts as forces in uncertain, emergent illnesses," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 577-590, February.
    9. Radley, Alan & Mayberry, John & Pearce, Melanie, 2008. "Time, space and opportunity in the outpatient consultation: 'The doctor's story'," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(7), pages 1484-1496, April.
    10. Smit, Anri & Coetzee, Bronwynè Jo’sean & Roomaney, Rizwana & Bradshaw, Melissa & Swartz, Leslie, 2019. "Women's stories of living with breast cancer: A systematic review and meta-synthesis of qualitative evidence," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 222(C), pages 231-245.
    11. Thomas, Felicity & Aggleton, Peter & Anderson, Jane, 2010. "'Experts', 'partners' and 'fools': Exploring agency in HIV treatment seeking among African migrants in London," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(5), pages 736-743, March.
    12. Maryline Vivion & Nathalie Jauvin & Nektaria Nicolakakis & Mariève Pelletier & Marie-Claude Letellier & Caroline Biron, 2023. "Psychosocial Risks among Quebec Healthcare Workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Social Media Analysis," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(12), pages 1-15, June.
    13. Radcliffe, Polly, 2011. "Motherhood, pregnancy, and the negotiation of identity: The moral career of drug treatment," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(6), pages 984-991, March.
    14. Patricia Angeli da Silva Pigati & Renato Fraga Righetti & Victor Zuniga Dourado & Bruna Tiemi Cunha Nisiaymamoto & Beatriz Mangueira Saraiva-Romanholo & Iolanda de Fátima Lopes Calvo Tibério, 2022. "Resilience Improves the Quality of Life and Subjective Happiness of Physiotherapists during the COVID-19 Pandemic," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(14), pages 1-22, July.
    15. Eva Laerkner & Ingrid Egerod & Finn Olesen & Palle Toft & Helle Ploug Hansen, 2019. "Negotiated mobilisation: An ethnographic exploration of nurse–patient interactions in an intensive care unit," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(11-12), pages 2329-2339, June.
    16. O'Connor, Louise & Forrester, Donald & Holland, Sally & Williams, Annie, 2014. "Perspectives on children's experiences in families with parental substance misuse and child protection interventions," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 66-74.
    17. Lucio Ghio & Sara Patti & Giulia Piccinini & Cinzia Modafferi & Eleonora Lusetti & Massimo Mazzella & Massimo Del Sette, 2021. "Anxiety, Depression and Risk of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Health Workers: The Relationship with Burnout during COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(18), pages 1-13, September.
    18. Bullinger, Lindsey Rose & Wing, Coady, 2019. "How many children live with adults with opioid use disorder?," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 1-1.
    19. Carla Barros & Pilar Baylina, 2024. "Disclosing Strain: How Psychosocial Risk Factors Influence Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders in Healthcare Workers Preceding and during the COVID-19 Pandemic," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 21(5), pages 1-12, April.
    20. Ivan Marzocchi & Valerio Ghezzi & Cristina Di Tecco & Matteo Ronchetti & Valeria Ciampa & Ilaria Olivo & Claudio Barbaranelli, 2023. "Demand–Resource Profiles and Job Satisfaction in the Healthcare Sector: A Person-Centered Examination Using Bayesian Informative Hypothesis Testing," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(2), pages 1-21, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:343:y:2024:i:c:s0277953624000613. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.