Caregivers working with older people experience work dissatisfaction and low self-esteem orginating from power relations in municipal care organization

• This study explores how a combined gender and power perspective might explain and help us understand caregivers´ expressions of low self-esteem and dissatisfaction in their work with older people. The aim of the study was to discover whether caregivers’ experiences in the nursing home can be understood on the basis of Ås´ framework of the Five Master Techniques. The study was conducted within the municipal gerontological care system in Sweden and has an explorative, qualitative design. Twenty caregivers were interviewed, and the interviews were analysed using a qualitative content approach. Based on Ås´ theory of Five Master Techniques, the caregivers’ experiences of being made to feel invisible, ridiculed, deprived of information, receiving double punishment and feelings of guilt and shame emerged from the analyses. The study shows that the caregivers’ experiences, listed above, were all obvious at the nursing home and that these experiences also affected their feelings of work dissatisfaction and low self-esteem. The findings show the importance of using a gender perspective in caring, so that power relations in the organization can be explored, understood and combated.

Keyword

feminist theory

nursing home

work dissatisfaction

work satisfaction

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)