Företagshälsovårdare

ÅBO AKADEMI UNIVERSITY Faculty of Education and Welfare Studies Author: Helena Nyman Supervisor: D.Sc. (Health Care), RN Jessica Hemberg Master´s Thesis The vision of caring – Occupational healthcare nurses experiences of fulfilling their ethical values CARING SCIENCE Keywords: Ethics, nursing, nursing ethics, healthcare, values April 2016 Number of pages: 53 Appendices: 5 The purpose of this study is to reach an understanding of what ethos is in an occupational healthcare context. The study seeks answer to the following questions: 1. What is ethos in an occupational healthcare context? 2. What does it mean for occupational healthcare nurses to fulfill their inner ethos in a healthcare context controlled by economic demands of gain and efficiency? The main concept in this study is ethos as Eriksson describes it in her caritative theory of caring. Ethos is associated with ethics and reflects the fundamental assumptions that we have about the human being´s holiness and dignity and about the inviolability of life. The empirical part of the study consists of focus interviews with four occupational healthcare nurses. The study uses hermeneutical reading as an interpretation method, and presents the results of the study in six theses reflecting these against both recent research and the theoretical background. The results of the study show that ethos in occupational healthcare has to do with justice, honesty and faithfulness. These concepts are common to nurses in different nursing contexts. Ethos is not primarily profession-bound but is something universal, and eternal in the human being´s way of being and becoming. The study shows that ethos is a way of being, openness and a way of existing in love. To fulfill ethos in an occupational health context means to choose ethos continuously and courageously for the sake of the patient and the good, even if it involves a struggle or a sacrifice.