Sociologies (Jun 2016)
« On n’est pas si mauvaises ! » Les arrangements des aides-soignantes en établissements d’hébergement pour personnes âgées dépendantes (EHPAD) face aux épreuves de professionnalité
Abstract
Through in-depth ethnographic research, carried out by interviews and observations in two nursing homes for dependent elderly people, this article shows how nursing auxiliaries, despite difficult working conditions, manage to deal with the rules and constraints imposed on them so to make their daily tasks doable and tolerable. Nursing auxiliaries, led by an ideal model of how to accomplish their work, create common informal rules, despite the diversity of initial training and employment status. This search for a compromise between the desire to "do a good job” and the feeling of not receiving adequate means is, for them, a true "test of professionality". More generally, this reflects the challenges faced by professionals funded by public money in France, especially in the present context of budgetary restrictions and welfare state crisis.
