Att förstå omsorgsarbete – En studie om hur personal på särskilt boende framställer motiv bakom varför man gör som man gör

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study was to understand how care providers/ staff in nursing facilities for older people express the way they conduct their work. The purpose was based upon earlier research indicating a gap between policy and everyday practise. The questions were formulated on the basis of earlier research pointing to an inability for nursing homes to be flexible when faced with the needs and rights of the older residents. The empirical material has been gathered through a series of single- and focus group interviews. Four different municipal facilities were chosen. The interviewees were caregiving personnel and the head managers in each respective nursing facility. The theoretical framework is first and foremost based upon social constructivism. This meta- theory is tied together with George Herbert Mead’s socio- psychological thesis on the generalised other and Charles Wright Mills perspective on analysing vocabularies of motive. The study shows how caregiving personnel describe what they do, as based upon a lot of other things than the elderly people’s needs and rights. The main findings in the local context entails rhetoric based upon norms presented in three different categories. The conclusion drawn from afore mentioned rhetorical portrayal or manufacturing is that vocabularies of motive can be interpreted as a representation for a set of generally valid ideas, notions or “truths” within the local context. Caregiving personnel employ motives for action in certain situations based upon the notions of these ideas. These contextually based norms within the facilities can thus be said to provide the caregiving personnel with a certain local repertoire of logic for what kind of conduct is acceptable and what is not. A kind of logic that is in some cases problematic and is said to be limiting in the way elderly can exercise their rights.