An estimated 78% of U.S. employees say that work is their biggest source of stress. The effects of stress often result in employees taking sick days and rising workers compensation claims. Consequently, companies are developing wellness campaigns to address the problems arising from stress. Physical and mental health predominate in these programs with little attention paid to employees’ social health—the quality of their network of professional and personal relationships. This research examines employees’ perceptions of social health in one organization that has committed itself to workplace wellness. The results reveal three patterns or processes of social health: building camaraderie with peers, communing with superiors, and reconnecting with family. All processes of social health at work are negotiated through communication within organizational and personal communities. A Model of Working Well is offered as a foundation for futureresearchonorganizationalhealthideologiesandindividualhealthidentities.
A shift has occurred in the provision of health care to include a focus not just on biology and disease but also on the whole person, preventative care, and an array of healing modalities based on systems of beliefs and values not typically included within biomedical practice. This approach to health care, termed integrative medicine (IM), blends biomedicine with a broader understanding of patients and their illnesses, including elements of mind, body, and spirit that may be contributing to an ailment. While the use of integrative medicine has increased and centers for integrative medicine have proliferated within conventional health care organizations, distinct tensions arise from this amalgamation. The tensions between IM and biomedical clinicians often center on their differing training and philosophies, as well as on a larger system of health care that privileges biomedicine. As a result, this research is designed to explore the challenges IM clinicians face in collaborating with conventional practitioners to provide patient care. Analysis of interviews with 14 clinicians at one center for integrative medicine revealed four specific challenges they face in their attempt to co-practice IM with conventional medicine. The four challenges include (a) challenges to collaboration, (b) challenges to legitimacy, (c) challenges to consistency, and (d) challenges to unification. Future research should investigate the ways in which these challenges can be addressed so that collaboration throughout the system is facilitated. The professional training of clinicians, the structuring and institutionalization of integrative medicine, and enhanced systems for communicating patient information all play a significant role in this transformation.
Ideologies constrain and shape the sense that people make of sexual harassment experiences in the workplace. Victims, harassers, and witnesses are all influenced by the discourse that informs the decisions they make in relation to sexual harassment in the workplace. This research examined the implications of ideologies and discourses surrounding sexual harassment through interviews with four male professors from a large, southwestern U.S. university, who describe their experience as victims of sexual harassment.The men’s accounts revealed shifts back and forth between several ideological positions as a way to make sense of their experiences, highlighting the impact of hegemonic masculinity, the complicated process of consent, and the contrast between the experiences of male and female victims.
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