This study investigates how changing organizational and practical conditions in municipal eldercare during the COVID-19 pandemic shaped which needs became possible to prioritize and manage in care practice, and how this contributed to the formation of vulnerability. The study focuses on how home care staff and district nurses, through everyday decisions and prioritizations, influenced which needs were recognized and addressed in everyday care. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and the theoretical frameworks of sensemaking (Weick, 1988) and street-level bureaucracy (Lipsky, 2010), the study demonstrates that vulnerability emerged as a process shaped through the interplay between organizational conditions, professional judgments, and everyday care practices, rather than as an individual characteristic.

The analysis shows how organizational priorities, categorization, selective attention, and everyday coping practices shaped which needs became visible, actionable, and possible to follow over time in care practice. Organizational conditions during the pandemic contributed to a care logic in which acute and medically urgent needs became more immediately manageable within everyday practice, while relational, emotional, and socially complex needs were more difficult to accommodate under conditions of uncertainty, time pressure, and changing routines. Factors such as cognitive impairments and the absence of relatives further reinforced these forms of vulnerability. The study also shows how everyday actions within organizational frameworks, prioritization logic, and coping strategies both enabled care and contributed to the emergence of “blind spots,” where certain needs became less visible, less actionable, and therefore more difficult to address within everyday care practice. The findings underline that vulnerability in practice was shaped through the interaction between staff actions, organizational structures, and older care recipients complex needs. The results have implications for the development of crisis preparedness in eldercare and point to the need for organizational conditions that provide staff with sufficient time and professional discretion to recognize less visible needs and support more holistic care.