Sexual harassment from care recipients : How does the Health and Social Care Programme

The aim is to investigate what the aspects are that contribute to students, training to become assistant nurses, get accustomed to being subjected to sexual harassment from care recipients. Learning a vocation in a workplace means being socialized into the job and the vocational culture (Colley et al. 2003). Researchers who have investigated violence and threats in healthcare speak of normalization processes, employees are socialized into a context where they are expected to tolerate aggression. It is therefore pointed out that this must be understood in relation to organizational and structural factors (Reyes 2014). Hence, the present study focuses the upper secondary Health and Social Care programme as an institution. Neo-institutional theory sheds light on how social actions are created and channeled through institutional arrangements. Institution is understood as a social order with accepted patterns of action. Institutionalization is a social process that means that individuals within, for example, an organization or a professional field, will gain a largely shared view of social reality, which in turn leads to the formulation of appropriate ways of acting in different situations and contexts. This means that informal or formal rules for how one should behave are created (DiMaggio & Powell 1991; Johansson 2006). The empirical material for the study consists of semi-structured individual interviews with twelve vocational teachers and ten assistant nurses who act as practice supervisors for students in the Health and Social Care programme. During the interviews, an interview guide was used and we also asked the participants to comment on vignettes that consisted of fictitious cases that we had constructed based on previously conducted interviews with nursing students. By using cases based on conditions that students in our previous research have described, the vignettes appeared realistic at the same time as they were fictitious and hypothetical. The material has been analyzed in accordance with thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke 2006; Bryan 2008). According to the vocational teachers and supervisors who have participated in this study, sexual harassment from patients and care recipients is part of the institutionalized vocational role and vocational culture. Two aspects that enable sexual harassment by care recipients to be part of the vocational culture are, firstly, that the assistant nurse is expected to tolerate the care recipient's behavior and, secondly, that there is silence around sexual harassment. Without both of these aspects, sexual harassment would hardly be part of the vocational culture. References – only the most important references (max 100 words) Braun, V. & Clarke, V. 2006. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3:2. Bryman, Alan (2008). Social research methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Colley, H., James, D., Tedder, M. & Diment, K. (2003). Learning as Becoming in Vocational Education and Training. Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 55: 4. DiMaggio, P. & Powell, W. (1991). The New Institutionalism i organizational analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Johansson, R. (2006). Nyinstitutionell organisationsteori. Grape, Blom & Johansson (red.). Organisation och omvärld: Lund: Studentlitteratur. Reyes de los, P. (2014). Rädd på jobbet? Genus, hot och våld i arbetslivet. Stockholm: AFA.