A tough working climate and the lack of extrinsic motivation at workplaces within health care raise the question of what instead drives employees within this industry. A possible answer to this is Public Service Motivation (PSM) - a type of motivation that is based on the desire to do good for society and its individuals. In order to investigate this further we have performed a qualitative study consisting of ten interviews with people working with institutional care, where the purpose has been to identify the sources of motivation and determine the impact of PSM. The results show that the compassion dimension of PSM appears to be one of the most salient motivational factors. While the rest of the PSM dimensions fail to explain the level of motivation to the same extent as compassion, other factors are recognized, such as relatedness and aspects of the nature of the work itself.

The aim with the literature study was to describe how persons with dementia and health care workers in the geriatric care experiences soft massage and to describe the derived effects for persons with dementia. Scientific articles were sampled from the databases: Medline (Pub Med), Cinahl and Psyc INFO. The main results of the study are presented in three parts: how persons with dementia experiences soft massage, health care workers experiences of giving soft massage and the health care workers descriptions on derived effects on persons with dementia. The results showed that persons with dementia experienced a positive reaction to soft massage and the health care workers did no longer feel helpless in their care service towards persons with dementia. The studies showed that soft massage decreased agitation, wandering, pain and sleeplessness.

The overall aim with this study was to explore the understanding of how nursing staff - at a service flat in the county of Gävleborg, is related to the residents with intellectual disabilities, with regard to the residents' health. Five personal research interviews were conducted with nursing staff in a sheltered housing. The survey was based on a qualitative method with semi-structured interviews. Five nursing staff aged 27-57 were participated in this investigation. The analysis was conducted, by using a thematic approach.My overall findings show that Nursing staff have different roles to play depending on the situation in their relationship with the residents.

Ridterapi har varit känd som behandlingsform för sjukgymnaster sedan länge, men vad är det arbetsterapeuterna anser att ridterapi kan ge vid rehabilitering? Syftet med denna studie var att beskriva arbetsterapeutens erfarenheter av att använda sig av ridterapi som behandlingsform till personer med funktionella begränsningar. Insamlingen av data skedde med hjälp av en egen konstruerad enkät med såväl slutna som öppna frågor. Det framgick att arbetsterapeuterna ansåg att ridterapi är en behandlingsform, med många positiva behandlingseffekter och att ridterapi är ett bra komplement till övrig behandling. Slutsatsen är att det inom ridterapi saknas validerade mätinstrument, vilka skulle göra det lättare att sammanställa en utvärdera, ridterapi som behandlingsmetod..

Service branding is a subject that has been excluded from the traditional branding theory. Our main purpose with this paper is to distinguish what characterizes service branding. To do this, we have looked in to both service marketing theory as well as branding theory. We have also looked at the existing theory concerning service branding. Six qualitative interviews have been performed to explain what characterizes service branding.

As self-service technologies become more common in service provisions, a deeper understanding is needed of how customer satisfaction is affected by automated service encounters. Drawing from theories of customer satisfaction, human interaction, and the dynamics of complex service provisions, the differences between automated and interpersonal service encounters in the initial part of a service provision are examined in terms of customers? evaluation of the service encounter itself, overall satisfaction, as well as the service encounter?s impact on global evaluations and evaluations of other non-dependant service encounters. The study was performed on people travelling by air on Swedish domestic routes. Passengers were asked to evaluate the airline?s performance on different attributes of the air travel they had undertaken, as well as to form an overall evaluation of the service.

The present study examines the effect of a nine-hour Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) intervention for teachers who experience stress. Twenty-two teachers from four different counties in southern Sweden were randomly allocated to an ACT intervention (n=15) and a control group (n=7). The ACT condition received three three-hour sessions of ACT over a six-week period, and the control group received a three-hour stress lecture at one occasion. At a follow-up four-weeks after completed intervention, ACT participants showed significant in-group differences on stress, psychological flexibility, general health, and burnout. At a between group comparison, only psychological flexibility was significantly enhanced at the follow-up.

Due to a globalised world business travel is flourishing. This paper examines how middle level executives, travelling a lot in their work at a multi-national company, feel about their travel. It looks for links between business travel and work satisfaction among them. A short presentation of the patterns of business travel and relevant motivational and stress theories is given. Data for the paper is collected using a survey (78 participants) and interviews.

Purpose: From an activity-perspective examine the meaning of housing accessibility and older persons´ perception of participation. Method: Systematic literature review of articles searched in the databases, Medline, Pubmed, Ahmed, Cinahl, Scopus and Google Scholar. Search on individual keywords, and in various combinations of the words home environment, home modification, occupational therapy, aging, accessibility and participation. Nine scientific articles were examined. Results: The articles were published between 2005 and 2009.

AbstractJerfström, M. (2013). Mission overweight and obesity ? how do child-care centers operate? C-thesis in Public Health. Faculty of Health and Occupational Studies.

Threats and violence, or the risk of being subjected to threats and violence in the workplace, is a major health and safety problems that exists in many professions. To be exposed to threats and violence can have serious consequences for the employee's health but also for the organization in question. The aims of this study was to investigate the prevalence of threats and violence at the Swedish Migration Board detention, and to examine whether there were health problems among employees who may be exposed to threats and violence. A web-based questionnaire was answered by 29 employees (response rate = 51 percent). The results showed that more employees had been exposed to verbal threats (66 percent), compared to physical violence (10 percent), and they showed a greater tendency to report physical violence, as opposed to verbal threats.

Every business is subject to service failures. The process of correcting these failures and turning disappointed customers back into happy ones is called service recovery. This is particularly important in the hotel business, where there are many moments of truth where customers may become dissatisfied. To further complicate things, service recovery is a process where you may have to correct errors of others - people beyond your control. The research field is relatively new and there are no turn-key solutions as to how to systematically work with service recovery.

Background: Resources that are hard to put a value on and cannot be classified as assets in the balance sheet as well as the development towards the information society has led to an increasing need and use for voluntary information in the annual reports. The increase of voluntary information can foremost be seen in the field of human resources.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe the development of voluntary information about human resources in the annual report of a number of Swedish quoted companies. The purpose is also to see if there is a difference in the development between manufacturing companies and service companies.Method: Six manufacturing companies and six service companies were chosen from the Stockholm exchange A-list. Using both a qualitative and quantitative research method the annual reports of the chosencompanies were studied for the years 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001, and 2003. A model consisting of seven categories; health, diversity, recruitment, staff turnover and comfort, benefits and motivation, education and competence development, was developed to clarify were the development took place.Conclusions: After finishing the study one can tell that the amount of voluntary information about human resources in the annual report has increased even though the percentage share of the total annual report only has increased appreciably for manufacturing companies.

Hair care is a hygienic treatment and is supervised by the Local Environment and Public Health Committee in the municipality. According to the Swedish Environmental Code, hairdressers as all practitioners are required to take measurements to protect the environment and public health. In hygienic treatments hazards may arise from inadequate hygiene practice which spread infection. Hazards may also arise from the use of hair care products such as permanent wave solutions, bleaches and hair dyes. Some hair dye components are known to cause contact allergy, mostly in hair dressers who are exposed professionally but also in some cases in consumers.

School can be an effective environment for achieving a more equal health among children and adolescents, since many individuals can be reached by the health promoting work in the school. In the year of 2000 a project in Skåne was started for the development of health promoting schools. The health promoting projects however, have shown to be of short duration. So, as an alternative, the integration of the health in school ought to be tried. The aim of this study is to give examples how health promoting schools can strengthen their profile.