Analysis of Quality of Life Domains in Emergency Hospital Services Personnel. Case Study: ICU Medical Team

Abstract

Based on the demarcation professional group of which we want to investigate in the sociological perspective, we emphasize that our work is part of a multidisciplinary approach generated by very complex professional roles of the participants in our research. We note that the multidisciplinary aspect is associated with the presence of elements of the sociology and psychology confluence, however, we maintain the appearance of multi-disciplinary research approach towards the conceptualization and sociological operationalization of social relations and psychological impacts in the investigated facts. Medical practice is a mix of relationships, facts, phenomena and socio-medical processes subordinated to a major subsystem of society: health care system. Coming out of the sphere of medical sociology specific topics, we decided circumscribing our research field outside medical social relations such as: socio-cultural determinants of health and illness, the sociological and psychological aspects of the therapeutic relationship physician-patient, medicine as a social institution, social aetiology of disease, etc. We restricted the research to a well-defined social environment: hospital emergency medical clinic called ICU and specific issues arising from professional roles of social actors (doctors and nurses) working in this area. More specifically, we wanted to investigate sociological and psychological aspects of these roles in interaction with specific professional environment, from a dual perspective. First, we have investigated an objective perspective of medical team: access to professional development, access to socio-emotional leaders with recognized medical skills, access to medical information technology and performance, and in terms of factors (professional activities / relationships) that are specific to generate satisfaction of medical practice in the Intensive Care Unit. Second, we have investigated a subjective perspective: interaction of personality traits with job satisfaction and individual system of reference values. The investigation carried out on the two social groups- physicians and nurses- have the form of a qualitative research through interviews and questionnaires, on a small sample of subjects, and is a preliminary testing of a comprehensive future research. This paper is made and published under the aegis of the Research Institute for Quality of Life, Romanian Academy as a part of programme co-funded by the European Union within the Operational Sectorial Programme for Human Resources Development through the project for Pluri and interdisciplinary in doctoral and post-doctoral programmes Project Code: POSDRU/159/1.5/S/141086.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n22p433