“Yuck, that’s disgusting!”—“No, not to me!”: Antecedents of disgust in geriatric care and its relation to emotional exhaustion and intention to leave

The identification of the relationship between nursing students' disgust sensitivity and willingness to care for the elderly: The case of a university

OBJECTIVES

In clinical learning environments, nursing students frequently encounter situations that cause physical disgust. It is believed that a high sensitivity to disgust among students can negatively affect their academic performance and caregiving behavior. This study was conducted to identify the relationship between nursing students' disgust sensitivity and willingness to care for older adults.

METHOD

This descriptive and cross-sectional research was conducted with 807 volunteer participants studying at the Department of Nursing of a university in southeast Turkey. The research data were collected by using the Personal Information Form, the Disgust Sensitivity Scale - Revised Form (DS-R), and the Willingness to Care for the Elderly Scale (WCES) . Descriptive statistics, the Student's t-test, the Mann-Whitney U test, the One-Way Analysis of Variance, and Pearson's correlation were used in the analysis of research data.

RESULTS

In the research, nursing students' mean DS-R and WCES scores were calculated respectively as 77.93 ± 16.40 and 34.16 ± 5.98 points. A statistically significant negative relationship was found between nursing students' DS-R and WCES scores (p < 0.05). In the research, there were statistically significant differences in nursing students' mean DS-R scores as per the variables of student gender and class year. Also, it was found that, as per the variables of student nationality and the status of assuming responsibility for the care of a sick or old relative, there were statistically significant differences in both nursing students' mean DS-R scores and their mean WCES scores (p < 0.05).

CONCLUSION

It was concluded that nursing students had high-level disgust sensitivity and medium-level willingness to care for an older adult. As the disgust sensitivity of the nursing students increased, their willingness to care for an older adult was negatively affected. Therefore, it is important that nurse educators evaluate nursing students' disgust sensitivity and help nursing students define and eliminate their disgust emotions.

The Paradoxical Effects of COVID-19 Event Strength on Employee Turnover Intention

As a global pandemic, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has brought enormous challenges to employees and organizations. Although numerous existing studies have highlighted that the COVID-19 pandemic is a stressful event and empirically proved its detrimental effect on employee turnover intention, few scholars have noted that this pandemic can deteriorate the external economic and employment environment simultaneously, which may further complicate employees' intentions to leave or stay in the current organization. Drawing on event system theory and social cognitive theory, this study aims to uncover two potential cognitive mechanisms of the complex impact of COVID-19 event strength on employee turnover intention. To examine the proposed model, this study employed a three-wave and time-lagged research design and collected data from a sample of 432 employees of four Chinese companies from different industries. The findings indicated that COVID-19 event strength was negatively related to perceived external employability, and ultimately curbed employee turnover intention. Yet, COVID-19 event strength also negatively predicted perceived organizational growth, thus influencing employees to exhibit intentions to quit. Moreover, organizational identification not only attenuated the positive effect of perceived external employability on turnover intention but also amplified the negative impact of perceived organizational growth on turnover intention. Further, organizational identification moderated the indirect effects of COVID-19 event strength on turnover intention through perceived external employability and perceived organizational growth. This study provided a comprehensive insight into scholars' understanding of the COVID-19 downstream outcomes.

Investigation of the relationship between nursing students' disgust sensitivity and caring behaviours

AIM

This study aimed to investigate the disgust sensitivity of nursing students, the factors affecting this sensitivity, their caring behaviors and the relationships between these components.

BACKGROUND

Disgust sensitivity has been conceptualized as the degree of disgust felt in response to various stimuli. Nursing students often encounter recognized disgust triggers in clinical practice, such as feces, mucus, urine, foul-smelling wounds and contact with the dead. The nursing students' disgust sensitivity can affect the way they think and may affect their care behaviors.

DESIGN

The study used a descriptive cross-sectional design and was conducted with nursing students in a Turkish university nursing program (n = 577).

METHODS

The study data was collected through the Disgust Sensitivity Scale-Revised Form and the Caring Assessment Questionnaire.

RESULTS

Of the students in the study, 59.6% stated that they experienced disgust while providing care. A negative relationship was found between students' total scores from the Disgust Scale and the Caring Assessment Questionnaire (p < 0.01). The students' disgust sensitivity level was high and the higher the disgust sensitivity, the fewer caring behaviors they exhibited.

CONCLUSIONS

In light of these findings, it can be said that the caring behaviors of nursing students are negatively influenced by disgust sensitivity. Hence, nurse educators need to evaluate students' disgust sensitivity, help students to identify and address their disgust emotions, deal with disgust management strategies together and be aware of when students need support.

Dirty work: cultural iconography and working-class pride in industrial apprenticeships

In the seemingly routine and the everyday, lie layers of cultural and social symbolism. So it is with dirt. This article examines the social and cultural roles of dirt within socialization practices in working-class industrial and ex-industrial communities. Drawn from oral history accounts with 46 former and current engineering apprentices, the discussion demonstrates dirt as a concept and a practicality, and how the idea of 'getting dirty' provided a cultural imagery used to renegotiate moral boundaries that devalue working class, masculine experiences and identities. Building on from the work of Skeggs (1997, 2004, 2011), it demonstrates the lived experience of value within the industrial workplace past and present. Through dirt, the role of cultural artefacts and iconography within working-class experience and workplace training is explored. Additionally, the role of a cultural icon like dirt in the intergenerational dialogues of workplace communities is given new attention. In doing so the article argues that while after decades of underinvestment in apprenticeships as a model for training in the UK, a recent resurgence in interest can go some way in overcoming the long-term effects of the loss of large-scale industrial work. However, the cultures of work attached to the apprenticeships of the past are, within deindustrialization, much more complicated to develop or recreate.

Understaffing and registered nurses’ turnover: The moderating role of regular rest breaks

Current demographic and occupational changes call for new interventions to promote staff retention, especially in nursing where understaffing promotes turnover by increasing workload and strain. Based on previous research examining recovery at work, we investigated whether well-designed rest breaks can function as a resource that buffers adverse consequences of understaffing in nursing. We used a cross-sectional, multi-method study design and assessed understaffing of registered nurses, their regularity of rest breaks, and their annual turnover behaviour in 80 German geriatric nursing teams. As expected, understaffing positively predicted turnover only in work conditions with irregular rest breaks. Hence, implementing regularly scheduled rest breaks can be considered as an effective intervention for improving retention of nurses even in a situation of understaffing.

Uncovering the care setting-turnover intention relationship of geriatric nurses

In times of global demographic changes, strategies are needed for improving nursing staff retention. We examined the association of care setting (nursing homes and home care) with geriatric nurses' intention to leave their job and their profession. Thus far, it is unclear why nurses' turnover intention and behaviour do not differ between care settings, although working conditions tend to be better in home care. We used the Job Demands-Resources model to explain indirect and buffering effects by job demands (time pressure, social conflicts) and resources (task identity, supervisor support, and co-worker support) via nurses' perceived health and job satisfaction on nurses' leaving intentions. The present cross-sectional questionnaire study was conducted with a sample of N = 278 registered nurses and nursing aides in German geriatric care. As expected, there was no direct relationship between care setting and leaving attitudes. Demands and resources predicted the intention to leave with job satisfaction as mediator. We found more demands in nursing homes but no differences in resources. Serial mediation effects of care setting on intentions to leave via demands/resources and health/job satisfaction as mediators were found only for time pressure and social conflicts. Unexpectedly, there were no clear differences between intention to leave the job and the profession. As hypotheses were only partly confirmed, other buffering and detrimental effects on leaving intentions are discussed. The present data suggest that detailed concepts for personnel and career planning in geriatric care are needed.