Stressupplevelser och copingstrategier hos vårdpersonal på ett äldreboende.

by Carlsson, Maria

The aim of the study was to describe what stressors caregivers experience in their work with elderly people in a care home; the caregivers’ experiences of the stressors and which coping strategies they use in these situations. The study had a descriptive design. Data were collected with the instrument Daily Assessment of Coping (DCA). The results showed that the caregivers (n 31) experienced a stressor at 86 out of 155 working occasions. The stressors resulted in two main categories; stressors related to patients and stressors related to employees. The main categories consisted of five sub categories; patient behaviour, nursing problems, contact with relatives, workload and communication/co-operation. The median value for stress was five (1 = not troublesome at all – 7 = very troublesome). At 40 occasions the caregivers experienced that they were “not at all” able to influence the situation, at 39 occasions “to a certain extent” and at 6 occasions “very much”. At 56 occasions the situation was “quite expected”, at 12 occasions “quite unexpected” and at 9 occasions “totally unexpected” The results of DCA showed that the most frequent coping strategies were “did something to it“, “sought support from others” and “accepted the problem”. The conclusion is that daily stressors are frequent within elderly care and that stress levels are relatively high. Most common was that the caregivers experienced the stressors as expected and that they were unable to influence the situation.