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Home-based care worker qualities that promote resilience
The researcher understands resilience to mean achieving your goals despite adversities. The most appropriate conceptualisation seems to be that it is the ability to maintain personal and professional wellbeing in the face of ongoing work stress and adversity (McCann, Beddoe, McCormick, Huggard, Kedge, Adamson & Huggard, 2013:61). From the data presented in this chapter so far, it seems evident that home-based care work is not a job that could be undertaken mechanically without any emotion. It seems that the job functioning engages almost all the senses of workers and from time to time the individual finds himself/herself having to deal with the stress and adversity mentioned. The previous theme (theme 5) gave testimony to the supervision support the home-based carers needed in light of what they have to endure daily.
Three sub-themes were extracted from this theme, namely work attitude, conduct and values. The actual statements of the participants in terms of what they regarded as good qualities of a home-based care worker are presented first. Thereafter, the statements are summarised and presented as sub-themes in Table 6.7. The participants’ responses were captured as follows:
“A home-based care worker must have the heart to do this kind of work…..perseverance is very important as sometimes we work for up to nine months without a stipend…..must be able to keep the patient’s secrets……I say so because sometimes you find a patient having messed himself/herself…an embarrassing situation… and you cannot share that with anyone…….”
“One must have a good work ethic. …must also be respectful because it is through respect that others will respect you too…..patients can sometimes be difficult because of the pain they are experiencing…. you should not allow that to get to you and just be empathetic….the work has a lot of challenges…..it is important to always remember that the patient comes first…”
“You need to accept the patients as they are, do not be judgmental….make an effort to keep their private matters confidential…. A smile is very important……put the needs of the patient first.”
“Speak to the patient honestly in a non-judgmental way, have patience and bring joy to the patient…”
The data further revealed that in addition to non-judgmental attitude and confidentiality and respect, patience was mentioned by most of the participants as being a very important attribute to have in home-based care. It seems, because of the self-giving and caring nature of the work, without patience, the work could become unbearable and unfulfilling (McAllister & McKinnon, 2009:371). Additional inputs from the participants were categorised as sub-themes and are presented in a table format (Table 6.7). This was done to ensure that the most of the valuable inputs of the participants were reflected and also because resilience sometimes does not fit into a clear cut definition, but better described in terms of qualities, traits and characteristics (Jackson, Firtko & Edenborough, 2007:3).
Identified workplace support needs
The previous section presented a detailed discussion of what the participants perceived as challenges in their work environment, what helped them cope, and what could be done to improve job satisfaction, resilience and the quality of the services they rendered. The workplace support needs were identified using the analysed data from the participants and are summarised below. They are:
relief from emotional stress;
coping with patient care demands;
lack of material resources: transport to home visits and for patients to healthcare facilities, food parcels and some form of financial incentives;
need for structured debriefing sessions; and
need for on-going professional development and training.
With the exception of lack of resources, the participants put forward recommendations and suggestions as to how the identified support needs could be met. They proposed structured and regular debriefing (weekly, fortnightly or monthly), structured individual supervision, monthly group supervision, individual trauma counselling, structured on-going training and onsite support by the supervisor.
These support needs and the participants’ intervention proposals subsequently made a meaningful contribution to the compilation of the stress management programme. To ensure that the proposed stress management programme was not only based on the views of the home-based care workers, their supervisors were also interviewed as secondary sources of information. The next section focuses on the data gathered from the supervisors/managers.
Comparison of non-standardised questionnaire responses with the participants’ age, years of experience and highest qualification levels
It has been established that, even though the participants found their work fulfilling, there were features of the work that they were dissatisfied with. This topic explores, through bivariate statistics, whether there was any association or relationship between job satisfaction and dissatisfaction and age, years of work experience and highest qualification level of the participants. As mentioned earlier, the overall aim was to gather as much data as possible so that the proposed stress management programme is holistic in addressing the needs of the home-based care workers.
In addition to descriptive statistics, a parametric test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), was also used to conduct the bivariate analysis, as the research sample showed a normal distribution on the scatterplots, and based on the outcome of the Shapiro-Wilk test that obtained a p-value > 0.05 in all instances. The analysis of variance is a general method of testing the difference between the means of more than two groups on one factor or dimension (Moore, 2010:643; Salkind, 2017:289). The level of significance for the test results was established at 0.05, which is a commonly used value in the social sciences (Marsh & Elliot, 2008:151). Such a level of significance basically means that results from the comparisons of variables mentioned are only meaningful if their p-value is below 0.05, that is, p<0.05.
Other tests used as earlier mentioned were the Post Hoc multiple comparison test and the Pearson correlation coefficient, specifically with the comparison between the age groups of the participants and job satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Firstly, both job satisfaction and dissatisfaction were compared with the ages of the participants, secondly, with their years of experience as home-based care workers and thirdly, with their highest qualification level to establish the presence or absence of association.
CHAPTER 1: GENERAL ORIENTATION OF THE STUDY
1.1 INTRODUCTION
1.2 CONCEPTUALISATION OF KEY CONCEPTS
1.3 PROBLEM STATEMENT AND RATIONALE
1.4 GOAL AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
1.5 OVERVIEW OF RESEARCH METHODS
1.6 CONTENTS OF THE RESEARCH REPORT
CHAPTER 2: HOME-BASED CARE AND THE HIV AND AIDS PANDEMIC
2.1 INTRODUCTION
2.2 HIV AND AIDS PANDEMIC: CURRENT TRENDS AND DEVELOPMENTS
2.3 GENERAL OVERVIEW OF HOME-BASED CARE
2.4 WORKPLACE STRESS IN HEALTHCARE
2.5 WORKPLACE STRESS IN THE HIV AND AIDS FIELD
2.6 WORKPLACE STRESS AMONG HIV AND AIDS HOME-BASED CARE PRACTITIONERS
2.7 SUMMARY
CHAPTER 3: STRESS MANAGEMENT INTERVENTIONS
3.1 INTRODUCTION
3.2 STRESS AS A CONCEPT
3.3 ADDRESSING WORKPLACE STRESS THROUGH STRESS MANAGEMENT PROGRAMMES
3.4 OVERVIEW OF STRESS MANAGEMENT INTERVENTIONS IN HEALTHCARE
3.5 SUMMARY
CHAPTER 4: SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM: THEORETICAL ORIENTATION OF THE STUDY
4.1 INTRODUCTION
4.2. OVERVIEW OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM
4.3 SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM AND CONSTRUCTIVISM
4.4 SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM AND SOCIAL WORK RESEARCH
4.5 APPLICATION OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM TO THE STUDY
4.6 SUMMARY
CHAPTER 5: RESEARCH METHODS
5.1 INTRODUCTION
5.2 RESEARCH QUESTION
5.3 RESEARCH APPROACH
5.4 TYPE OF RESEARCH
5.5 RESEARCH DESIGNS
5.6 STUDY POPULATION AND SAMPLING
5.7 DATA COLLECTION
5.8 DATA ANALYSIS
5.9 PILOT STUDY
5.10 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
5.11 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
5.12 SUMMARY
CHAPTER 6: QUALITATIVE RESEARCH FINDINGS: PROBLEM ANALYSIS AND PROJECT PLANNING (PHASE 1)
6.1 INTRODUCTION
6.2 SECTION A: HIV AND AIDS HOME-BASED CARE PRACTITIONERS
6.3 SECTION B: HIV AND AIDS HOME-BASED CARE PRACTITIONERS’ SUPERVISORS/MANAGERS
6.4 SECTION C: DATA TRIANGULATION OF RESEARCH FINDINGS
6.5 SUMMARY
CHAPTER 7: QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH RESULTS: PROBLEM ANALYSIS AND PROJECT PLANNING (PHASE 1) & DATA TRIANGULATION
7.1 INTRODUCTION
7.2 SECTION A: RESEARCH RESULTS AND INTERPRETATION
7.3 SECTION B: DATA TRIANGULATION OF QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH FINDINGS
7.4 SUMMARY
CHAPTER 8: THE STRESS MANAGEMENT PROGRAMME FOR HIV AND AIDS HOME-BASED CARE PRACTITIONERS
8.1 INTRODUCTION
8.2 DESCRIPTION OF THE STRESS MANAGEMENT PROGRAMME
8.3 SUMMARY
CHAPTER 9: QUALITATIVE RESEARCH FINDINGS: EARLY DEVELOPMENT AND PILOT TESTING (PHASE 4)
9.1 INTRODUCTION
9.2 SECTION A: BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION OF THE PARTICIPANTS
9.3 SECTION B: RESEARCH FINDINGS FROM THE SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS
9.4. SECTION C: RESEARCH FINDINGS FROM SESSION EVALUATION FORMS.
9.5 COMPARISON OF PRE- AND POST-INTERVENTION DATA
9.6 APPLICATION OF THE LOGIC MODEL TO THE PILOT PROCESS
9.7 SUMMARY
CHAPTER 10: QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH RESULTS: EARLY DEVELOPMENT AND PILOT TESTING (PHASE 4) & DATA TRIANGULATION
10.1 INTRODUCTION
10.2 SECTION A: QUANTITATIVE RESULTS AND INTERPRETATION
10.3 TRIANGULATION OF QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH FINDINGS
10.4 SUMMARY
CHAPTER 11: KEY FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
11.1 INTRODUCTION
11.2 OVERVIEW OF OBJECTIVES, KEY FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS FOR THE STUDY
11.3 RECOMMENDATIONS
11.4 SUMMARY
REFERENCES
