| Description |
Literature reports that nursing assistants are at high risk of committing abusive behavior against residents in their nursing homes. Nursing assistants are defined as workers who provide 90% o f direct care to clients without professional nursing credentials; therefore, some of them tend to be abusers. However, they also tend to be victims of abuse from their residents. This study assumed that abuse in nursing homes does not happen only from nursing assistants to residents, but also happens from residents to nursing assistants. The specific aims of this study were to: (1) identify the types of NA abuse (abuse from residents to nursing assistants) and other occupational conflicts; (2) identify the frequency of NA abuse and other occupational conflicts; and (3) compare nursing assistants who had a lower frequency rate of NA abuse to those who had a higher frequency rate of NA abuse, in order to determine whether or not those two groups differed in their frequency rates for other occupational conflicts, job satisfaction levels, burnout levels, and (RSR) resident-to-staff (nursing assistant) ratio. Nineteen nursing assistants who were selected by random sampling from four nursing homes in Salt Lake City provided data. The most frequently occurring NA abuse type was one of the types of psychological NA abuse, swearing/insulting, whose average frequency per shift (8 hours) for nursing assistants (N = 19) was 1.9 times in this research. Next in order was yelling (1.8 times per shift), followed by grabbing (1.3 times), hitting (1.0 times), pinching (0.9 times), scratching (0.6 times), punching (0.4 times), threatening (0.4 times), sexually harassing (0.4 times), kicking (0.2 times), and pushing (0.1 times). Regarding occupational conflicts, conflict with other nursing assistants was the most frequently reported type (0.7 times per shift). Forty percent of nursing assistants who answered the "source of stress" question (N = 15) regarded conflicts with other nursing assistants as the most serious source of stress, although they experienced NA abuse from their residents much more frequently than occupational conflicts with their co-workers. Nursing assistants who had a higher frequency rate of NA abuse had obvious tendencies in the expected directions that included encountering occupational conflicts more frequently, experiencing less satisfaction in their nursing assistant jobs, feeling more burnout, and working for more residents in their nursing homes. The results of t-tests indicated that nursing assistants who experienced the higher frequency rates ofNA abuse had more burnout and worked with higher resident-to-staff ratios than nursing assistants who had lower frequency rates of NA abuse. |
