Arbetsmiljö inom äldreomsorgen : en studie om enhetschefens resonemang och förhållningssätt i arbetsmiljöfrågor

Sammanfattning: The occupational group who works in the care of older people in Sweden is an exposed group since the work is often defined as a strenuous profession, both physical and psychically, and this puts comparatively many workers on sick leave. To promote good health, as well as prevent bad health is the main purpose of the work environment development. The attitude of the care manager towards work environment development may have a significant impact on the co-workers health. The purpose of the study was to investigate the attitude of care managers towards work environment development and the co-workers work environment and in the same time get knowledge in what issues they have a salutary approach respectively a pathological approach. Empirics were gathered from semi-structured interviews with six care managers from the care of older people administration in municipality of Kalmar. Two different organisation theories, Human Resource and Scientific management were used to analyse the empirics from the interview. Theories concerning salutary and pathological attitudes towards health were also used. The organisation theories were selected to understand the care managers attitude in the work environment development and the co-workers work environment. Every care managers in the interviews had both a salutary and a pathological attitude regarding the co-workers work environment and the work environment development concerning their own unit. The care managers waried between these two attitudes and one conclusion was that one attitude doesn’t need to exclude the other, they can rather be a complement to each other in a successful work environment development.  All the care managers in the study used strategies based on the Human Resource theory. For example everyone expressed that they worked on behalf of co-workers own influence, they encouraged independence and participation and they wanted every co-worker to experience the feeling of teamwork. However there are results in the study that point at, from a management perspective, the Scientific management too. This emerged when the care manager talked about savings conditions, the established budget of the unit, demands of efficiency and specialisation within the care of elderly.