In Korea, since July 2008, when Long-Term Care Insurance System came into effect, care workers, who work the most closely to the elderly, have emerged.
The short period of the training program, poor work environment, and low wage of the care worker make it predictable that they suffer from severe social psychological stress. The purpose of this study is to find out the causes of the care workers' social psychological stress and to improve their professionalism by preventing the stress.
The questions for the study were how general characteristics, work environment, and degree of self-respect of care workers affect their social psychological stress and how to prevent the stress in order to improve the quality of care workers.
For this study, 343 care workers from 21 nursing homes for the senior citizens in Gwangju and 38 in Jeonnam answered the questionnaires.
In summary, first, regarding the care workers' general characteristics, temporarily employed workers get more social psychological stress than permanently employed workers. Second, the stress decreases as the number of care workers working in one nursing home gets higher. Third, those with high self-respect have less social psychological stress. Finally, by comparing general characteristics, work environment, and degree of self-respect of care workers, a conclusion was brought as follows. The social psychological stress of care workers decreases as the care workers have higher education, the number of care workers working in one nursing home gets higher, and the care workers have higher self-respect. On the other way, the social psychological stress goes up for those from a private nursing home rather than those who work in a social welfare corporation. The most influential factor in this study was self-respect, then came the number of care workers in one nursing home, educational background, and the state of employment.
Suggestions for guaranteeing job stability and alleviating social psychological stress of care workers and suggestions for the future studies are as follows. First, care workers' employment as permanently employed workers should be expanded. Second, an institutional strategy to raise the number of care workers working in one nursing home should be provided. Third, a psychological program that helps to increase care workers' self-esteem should be developed. Lastly, future in-depth studies are suggested such as quality study on care workers' social psychological stress.