The focus of our study was to examine personal assistants and group home assistants experiences of stress at work, how they cope with stress and how it affects the relationship with the care recipient. The study is made out of a qualitative frame and based on interviews with two personal assistants and four group home assistants. Our theoretical perspectives consist of Aaron Antonovsky’s SOC theory, Richard Lazarus theory about coping and also sociologist Johan Asplund’s theory about social interaction. The result indicates that the experiences of stress are individual and varied among the participants while the presence of stress at work is a shared apprehension. The Main reasons for the emergence of stress are related to workload, diffuse information, work-tasks and staff exchange. Coping-strategies that are used to reduce the experiences of stress are spread between both problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping while the latter is more frequently applied. Social Support has a vital part in the staff’s management of stress. Colleagues, supervisors and other people in their close environment are presented as important resources. Our final conclusion is that stress has an impact on the relationship with the recipient of care because of the close interaction they have with each other. The close interaction with the recipient of care may however itself be a powerful stress factor due to the fact that the work itself is characterized by close interaction and it would be an impossibility to not be affected by it.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-20851 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Axelsson, Rickard, Johansson, Alexandra |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för socialt arbete, SA, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för socialt arbete, SA |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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