With a long-term care insurance system for senior citizens enforced from July 2008, the purpose of this study is to suggest directions for developing a care worker training program by looking at the professional identity of care workers and identifyin...
With a long-term care insurance system for senior citizens enforced from July 2008, the purpose of this study is to suggest directions for developing a care worker training program by looking at the professional identity of care workers and identifying which elements of the training program influence on establishing the professional identity.
The main results can be summarized as follows:
First, in terms of personal characteristics, 86.2% of care workers are female and 71.4% of respondents are in their 40s and 50s with an average age of 45. They are relatively highly educated with 90% of their educational attainments equal to and higher than those of high school graduate. The number of care workers also rose to 40.5% from 10.5%, which means that more people have converted their status to the newly-created licensed care workers since the qualification system of care worker was introduced.
Secondly, the overall professional identity of care workers scored 3.5833 on average, which was lower than those of paid in-house service workers and home-care workers surveyed in the preceding study. Out of the subcategories of professional identity, faith in service scored the highest followed by a sense of calling, faith in autonomy and the use of professional organization. The reason that faith in service and a sense of calling prevailed over the other two is because care workers are considered to have a role in assisting the sick elderly to get on with life by providing basic care for everyday tasks, pride in social recognition and respect for their sense of calling-required career, and an self-obligation to offer service to people who are socially excluded.
Thirdly and lastly, the factors that affect the professional identity out of a care worker training program included the satisfaction with training institution, lecturer's quality and the contents of training while personal characteristics did not much matter. Notably the satisfaction with training institution and contents have greater effect on all four subcategories of professional identity. After all, the greater the satisfaction with training lecturers and contents is, the higher the professional identity grows.
After considering all the outcomes above, this research has the following implications in terms of social welfare:
First, this study advises on how to train care workers to be professionals by identifying which elements have a positive effect on establishing the professional identity of care workers. In short, more professional care workers will be cultivated if the curriculum and contents of training are improved, and consistent education is offered by the proven institutions with a program developed for training qualified professional lecturers. Meanwhile, personal factors do not influence on building up professional identities, which means that collaboration between training institutions and long-term nursing facilities is required to achieve the ultimate goal of enhancing the quality of welfare service for the elderly. To this end, social welfare communities need to make utmost efforts.
Secondly, this paper suggests that if institutional framework is added to support the long-term care service system for senior citizens, it will be easier for care workers to attain professional abilities in their care service. Since the introduction of the system, while the controversy has continued over whether care workers should be recognized as professionals who are specialized in caring for the elderly, the training program will be an important means to guarantee the level of care service and will be eventually critical for the development of welfare for the elderly. The role of care worker who is a direct caregiver for the elderly, is important for determining the level of Korea's welfare service, thus the priority is to improve their expertise.