Dealing with daily emotions—supportive activities for the elderly in a municipal care setting

There are diverse descriptions of supportive activities in nursing to be found in the literature. What they have in common is their association with good care outcomes, but they may differ depending on the context in which the care is given. In a Swedish municipal elderly care setting, registered nurses (RN) work in a consultative way and they describe a part of their tasks as comprising supportive activities without specifying what kind of supportive activities they mean. The aim of the study was to explore the main concern of the support given by RN to a group of patients in an elderly home care setting. The study was conducted using Grounded Theory. Data were collected using nonparticipant observations regarding the supportive activities of 12 RN at the home of 36 patients between the ages of 80 and 102. Most of the home visit lasted about 40 min but some lasted for 90 min. The central category was about dealing with daily emotions. This was done by encouraging the situation and reducing the patient's limitations, but situations also occurred in which there was a gap of support. Support was about capturing the emotions that the patient expressed for a particular moment, but there were also situations in which RN chose not to give support. To develop a holistic eldercare, more knowledge is needed about the factors causing the RN to choose not to provide support on some occasions

Health consequences of workplace bullying : experiences from the perspective of employees in the public service sector

The aim of the study was to explore the perceived health consequences of workplace bullying. Open interviews were conducted with 22 informants; 20 bully victims and two persons working with bullying prevention. Data was assessed and analysed simultaneously in line with grounded theory methodology. A conceptual model was grounded in data, describing experiences of deteriorating psychological and physical health following bullying and efforts of returning to a “normal” life. The core category, “remaining marked for life”, illuminates the manner in which bullying was perceived as a psychic trauma or a traumatic life event causing the bullied person to be marked forever. The model includes five additional categories: “feeling guilt, shame and diminishing self-esteem”, “developing symptoms and reactions”, “getting limited space of action”, “working through the course of events” and “trying to obtain redress”. Bullying included the spreading of rumours and repeated insults aimed at changing the image of the victim and resulting in feelings of guilt, shame and diminishing self-esteem. Physical and psychosomatic symptoms gradually emerge and medical treatment and sick listing follow. The longer the bullying continues, the more limited the possibility to change the situation and the victim has a more limited space of action. Returning to a “normal” life was possible, but presupposed that the victim had worked through of the course of events. The bullied person also tried to obtain redress, such as through monetary compensation or professional confirmation. Despite this, bullying left an internal scar: the bully victim was marked for life

Management and leadership approaches to health promotion and sustainable workplaces : A scoping review

Whole-system approaches linking workplace health promotion to the development of a sustainable working life have been advocated. The aim of this scoping review was to map out if and how whole-system approaches to workplace health promotion with a focus on management, leadership, and economic efficiency have been used in Nordic health promotion research. In addition, we wanted to investigate, in depth, if and how management and/or leadership approaches related to sustainable workplaces are addressed. Eighty-three articles were included in an analysis of the studies' aims and content, research design, and country. For a further in-depth qualitative content analysis we excluded 63 articles in which management and/or leadership were only one of several factors studied. In the in-depth analysis of the 20 remaining studies, four main categories connected to sustainable workplaces emerged: studies including a whole system understanding; studies examining success factors for the implementation of workplace health promotion; studies using sustainability for framing the study; and studies highlighting health risks with an explicit economic focus. Aspects of sustainability were, in most articles, only included for framing the importance of the studies, and only few studies addressed aspects of sustainable workplaces from the perspective of a whole-system approach. Implications from this scoping review are that future Nordic workplace health promotion research needs to integrate health promotion and economic efficiency to a greater extent, in order to contribute to societal effectiveness and sustainability