THE INFLUENCE OF CARE WORKERS’ ATTITUDE TO DEMENTIA AND COPING STYLES ON OCCUPATIONAL STRESS

THE INFLUENCE OF CARE WORKERS’ ATTITUDE TO DEMENTIA AND COPING STYLES ON OCCUPATIONAL STRESS

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Introduction
In most long-term medical facilities, care providers carry out complex jobs, providing care and support to their dementia patients, enduring psychological and emotional needs as well as meeting the needs of their family members. Sometimes, nurse Assistants and personal carers in the nursing care facilities are engaged for lengthy hours, with low salaries, and poor compensation benefits (Pitfield, Shahriyarmolki, & Livingston, 2011). With such working environments, health practitioners in nursing facilities are often subjected to a lot of stress.

Ideally, the quality of health care in the facilities lies in the ability of the care workers to deliver superior services and so the need to take care of their welfare. Further, the connection between patient and caregivers is a critical feature of quality care as it dictates the patient wellness outcomes and the care worker performances. Consequently, stressors experienced by health workers do not only affect them but also extend to service recipients (Downs & Bowers, 2008). Of interest to the current research are the stress levels that care workers working with dementia patients go through. The study investigates the influence of work related stress and attitudes to dementia of care workers on job satisfaction. The study is based on the perspective that most care givers for dementia patients undergo stressful working environments that requirement improvement of the conditions.

Background of the Study
Dementia is the term used to refer to a wide range symptoms resulting from brain disorders. Dementia has significant effects on behaviour of the patients, the patient’s daily work routine and thinking. A person’s social lifestyle and working life is altered by dementia beyond a person’s normal operation. The severity of dementia may be to the extent of incapability to cope with daily activities which result from a decrease in cognitive ability. Dementia diagnosis by doctors is based on a number of significantly dysfunctional cognitive functions. Diagnosis is administered in the cases where a patient suffers from more than one cognitive function impairment (Alzheimer’s Association, 2013). The most commonly impaired cognitive functions affected are; judgment, message understanding, memory, spatial skills, attention, and language skills. Changes in personality may also be a dementia symptom. However, changes in personality mainly depend on the section of the brain that the disease resulting from dementia has impaired.

Anybody may be a victim of dementia; however, the older people are more prone to dementia than younger people. The cause of dementia should however not be understood as a disease of the aged but is caused by brain infection. Dementia inheritance happens in rare cases where it is caused particularly by mutation of a gene that causes the disease (Alzheimer’s Association, 2013). Other factors relating to a person’s health practice and lifestyle are known to have an impact on the risk of the disease acquisition. Physically dormant people, mentally dormant people and, people suffering from untreated high blood pressure and other factors relating to vascular dangers are at high risks of being affected with dementia. Dementia affects people in many forms.
Vascular dementia is caused by the impairment of the blood vessels located in the brain, which result from either numerous gradual mini-strokes or a single stroke (Prince, Guerchet, &Prina, 2013). Alzheimer’s disease on the other hand results from systematic deterioration of cognitive abilities. These declines in the cognitive abilities in most cases begin with impairment of the memory loss. It is the most rampant infection which accounts for over 60 percent of dementia cases (Alzheimer’s Association, 2013).

In a complex setting such as dementia residential or care home, care workers need the coping resources to regulate their physical and psychological resistance to stress. This aims to improve the problems encountered by care workers and to maintain productivity in their stay in this prolonged care setting (Gottlieb & Wolfe, 2002). However, KneeboneandMartin, (2003) suggested that although care workers experience different stressors while caring for dementia patient, their ability to cope efficiently may vary due to past negative experience encountered.

Occupational stress understanding and psychological health concept have a wide historical study. Stress is a general term that refers to a condition originating from a negative physical health or psychological health or both cases that may result in a person’s discomfort within his/her environment (Johnson et al., 2005). Stress may be an external catalyst, demand or load resulting from a situation, condition or event that has potentially harmful effects on an individual’s wellbeing. Mental stress is the reaction of a person to environmental stimulus that affects his/her physiology or psychology. Stress occurs when strain reactions are generated by an organism as a reaction to a specific event, condition or situation (AbuAlRub, 2004).
The body of a human being is naturally active to demand or threat and the reaction is displayed through a chemical response. This response generates an abnormal behaviour known as the strain. The body gradually regains its initial state after the threat or demand has been withdrawn. In the workplace, the workers are overloaded with tasks exceeding their ability and even with increased effort they still cannot manage the tasks (AbuAlRub, 2004). The overload provokes an anxiety and their heartbeat is gets faster due to their incapability to manage their workloads (Johnson, et al., 2005). The overall result is strain which may include; chronic headache (insomnia) and high blood pressure.

Direct care workers are the basic providers of services to the disabled and elderly people; they help these people with a wide variety of their daily needs by giving support to them. The support services include; getting about (moving around), adhering to scheduled daily activities, bathing, preparations of meals, dressing, and medical support (Munn-Giddings, &Winter, 2013). The care workers are vital in the enhancement of the lives of the less advantaged groups. Their attitudes towards the service to their clients are of great importance as it influences their ability to deliver quality to the needy people. Their continued support makes their client’s lives significant with regard to their interaction and conne