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It's frustrating! Managing emotional dissonance in aged care work
Author(s) -
King Debra
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
australian journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.417
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1839-4655
pISSN - 0157-6321
DOI - 10.1002/j.1839-4655.2012.tb00234.x
Subject(s) - cognitive dissonance , autonomy , care work , emotional labor , negotiation , psychology , work (physics) , project commissioning , job satisfaction , social psychology , psychological resilience , construct (python library) , nursing , publishing , medicine , sociology , political science , computer science , mechanical engineering , social science , law , programming language , engineering
Performing paid care work requires workers to simultaneously negotiate care and waged relationships. Mediating contradictions between the two often causes workers to experience frustration, a form of emotional dissonance. Drawing on semi‐structured interviews with 100 workers in Australian aged care organisations, this research identifies aspects of the work environment that enable care workers to successfully juggle or synthesise the emotional demands of their work. The research demonstrates that employers have an important role in alleviating frustration, and can do this by creating work environments which: give care workers relative autonomy; allow care workers to construct themselves as professional carers providing quality care; provide workers with support to manage their emotions and develop emotional resilience; and promote client recognition of workers' roles. Providing such work environments has the potential to not only alleviate workers' frustration, but also to increase job satisfaction and retain workers in aged care.