Nurse's aides in nursing homes: the relationship between organization and quality.

This study examines the work of the nurse's aide through a combination of participant observation and in-depth interviews with 30 nurse's aides. Data were analyzed using the grounded theory method of constant comparative dimensional analysis. Findings suggest that strategies developed by individual nurse's aides to organize their work are important determinants of both the quality of care and worker turnover. Quality of care may be better explained by Litwak's theory about the difficult juxtaposition between primary and formal groups than by the nurse's aides' lack of knowledge.