Les rythmes contradictoires de l’aide-soignante

Abstract

Based on a comparative and qualitative study conducted in France and Quebec, this paper shows that the integration phase of the newly-recruited nurse’s aides in geriatric organizations is a complex test of experimentation of a job full of collective norms of paces of work. The collective labor, through the voice of « elder » nurse’s aides, judges the ability of the new recruits to respect these paces and transmits locally created control strategies in order to respect the conflicting guidelines. However, the current situation of work intensification experienced in geriatric organizations in France and Quebec led to a dangerous weakening of the work collective or even to an individualized relationship to organizational issues. Such individualization may lead new recruits to ethical suffering because of the shortcuts they need to take in order to respect temporal norms.

Keywords

• health
• work sociology
• nurse’s aides
• EHPAD
• CHSLD
• control strategy