CAREGIVER PERCEPTIONS OF CARING IN THE ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENT.
Contributors: University of Washington.
Published: 1994
Number of pages: 148
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: This research explored the phenomenon of caring in the organizational environment from the perspective of the staff employed in two long-term care facilities. The purpose was to explore the possibility that caring can be enacted and experienced as an organizational way of being and to discover and describe organizational features which enhance or inhibit the perceived capacity of health care workers to practice caring.

The orientation and analytic method of the study was phenomenology. Data sources included participants from four groups of staff at each site: licensed professional staff(RNs, LPNs, therapists); nursing assistants; management staff and non-clinical service providers and support staff. Additional data were obtained from review of key documents. Data from the participants were collected through a two-part series of focus group discussions.

The findings of the study supported the proposition that caring can and does occur as an organizational way of being from the perspective of persons who enact them. Several themes emerged from the analysis that were synthesized into a model of organizational caring. The three components of the resultant model were (1) therapeutic processes of caring; (2) conditions or context of caring; and (3) potential organizational outcomes of caring. The therapeutic processes of caring identified were valuing, belonging to the whole, knowing, acting together, and promoting quality. The conditions that supported caring were trusting, communicating, and providing resources. A definition of caring based on the findings was proposed. Following analysis, a review of related literature revealed that the findings of this study are consistent with themes in other bodies of scholarship in nursing and organizational science.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-09, Section: B, page: 3822.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, 1994.

School code: 0250.