Integrating Dark Humor and Compassion by Cindy Cain - Article Example

Article Review Name: Instructor: Course: Date: Outline 1. Introduction 2. Identification and discussion 3. Aims and Argument 4. The principal Concepts for developing the argument 5. Methodology 6. Findings 7. Conclusions 8. Social significance of the ideas and arguments 9. Insights drawn from the article 10. Critical assessment or evaluation 10.1. The strengths of the research 10.2. Weaknesses of the research Introduction The article entitled “Integrating dark humor and compassion:” is an article written by Cindy Cain. It is a critical discussion on how various individuals express themselves at work places, displaying various emotions and unique personalities. The article is a discussion about the study of different ethnic groups and the effects that ethnography has on personality traits. The author divides people’s behaviors into two major categories, back end behaviors and front end behaviors. Cain (2012) presents human behaviors as expressions of their knowledge about life, and their understanding of the relationship of failures to death. In the article, the author emphasizes on the way hospice workers divide their time and space into strategies of presenting the traits of hospice workers as being compassionate and caring. It is based on secondary information from the classic writings of Goffman, about the two regions of social life; the front end and the back end. The title of the article itself suggests that the article is about the changing behavioral traits of workers. Identification and discussion The discussion begins from the definition and description of the back region and the front region. The author describes the front region as the visible behavioral attributes of an individual. It is related to the outward appearance and compliance to the laid down rules and procedures. The front region does not enable an individual to express the inner feelings and emotions but the outward image and related attributes such as age, ethnicity and the gender of the individual. The author proceeds to discuss the ways of identifying care workers using the predefined procedure. She argues that people present themselves in ways in which they would like others to view them. The article uses an analogy of a nurse interacting with patients and argues that a caring nurse is identified by the gentleness with which she serves the patients. The author majorly discusses the personality of hospice workers especially nurses and community health workers. The author then describes the methods she used to present the do the research and eventually present the analyzed information. She reveals that she used both structured and semi structured interviews for data collection. Apart from interviews, the author used observation of human behaviours among the hospice workers. Aims and Argument The main aim and objectives of this article is to describe the behaviours of workers at work places and their implications in the society. The author is interested in encouraging the development of professionalism through the improvement of human characters. She emphasizes on how workers can be good care takers and while at the same time applying professionalism. Cindy uses the idea of the two stages of behaviours, the front stage and the back stage, to illustrate and distinguish the existence of visible and invisible character traits defining the personality of hospice workers (Cain, 2012). The second aim of the author is that eventually, this article can enable the contemporary health service providers to apply the ideas and recommendations of the article in improving the quality of service by being professional care takers. Another aim that the author desires is to articulate the fact that hospice work is a profession that either wins the trust of its clients or totally loses it in a non-reversible manner. The principal Concepts for developing the argument The author uses the concept of back stage and front space to create a distinction between the real qualitative elements of personality such as gender, age and ethnicity, and the visible contemporary features such as dressing and emotional reactions. The second concept that Cindy uses is the treatment that she received from hospice workers. She reveals the need for improvement in the areas of care taking based on the real life experience to support her argument and confirm that it is indeed from real events, not fabricated claims. The author classifies the interaction between hospice workers and the patients as front stage behaviors. On the other hand, back stage behaviours often manifests when the hospice workers are in the presence of their fellow hospice counterparts from other professional institutions. The concept of this argument is best demonstrated in the case of nurses’ attendance to clients and the number of patients assigned to each nurse. It clearly reveals that the hospitals practically allocate eight patients to one nurse, a factor that could easily affect the attitudes of the nurses. Methodology Cindy has used qualitative methods of research, by the nature of data she has collected in compiling the article. The information in the article uses qualitative data related to the emotions, behaviors and the general outlook of the hospice workers. The process of the research begins from data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, data presentation, conclusion and eventually, recommendations. It does data collection by conducting structured and semi structured interviews among the hospice workers. In addition, Cindy does observation of the behavioral attributes of the hospice workers. The results of the data analysis in the research are also of qualitative nature. This includes passing judgment on the professionalism and the kindness in care taking that the nurse’s display towards the patients. The back stage and front stage analysis presents ideas that are uniquely set by this research, and purely attached to qualitative extrapolations. Findings The results of the research reveal that in a holist hospice work, the back stage space takes about 60 percent of the behaviors of the nurses in care taking. Professionalism therefore depends on the back stage more than the front stage. The remaining 40 per cent is occupied by the front stage space. Cindy supports this idea by stating that the back stage characters determine whether the nurses win the clients’ trust or loses. She this decided to develop an integrated program to work together with the nurses to promote the back stage behaviors. Conclusions This study ultimately shows that a holistic work place in hospice work has two categories of behaviors, the back stage and the front stage. It shows the effect of emotions, attitude and behaviors towards the quality of work that hospice workers deliver (Bulkin, 1992). Emotional experiences are easy to deal with because they are easily expressed in action. They are not as passive as the back stage features. This article also enlightens hospice workers about the significance and its inevitable nature. It complements the efforts of hospice workers for maintaining high levels of compassion and care for the patients. Social significance of the ideas and arguments The article has a social implication on the contemporary setup of hospice work places. It shows that hospice is not like any other profession. It is a field that considers ethical issues involved in serving clients. The article advises nurses about the negative consequences of emotional behaviors and how to avoid them. Hospice involves interaction with the general society and the article addresses the issues that accompany the nature of interaction and requires systematic approach to apply professionalism. The relevance of the article for everyday life is very evident in the teachings that it provides to the hospice workers. The stake holders to the article are nurses and the patients of various health institutions. Insights drawn from the article The article creates a unique insight in the way it separates personality descriptions into the two stages for the purpose of analyzing human behaviors. The back stage features are inherent features, most of which are natural. The front stage behaviors are characters that can be transformed through paradigm shift. The author is keen on the relationship between compassion among the nurses and the trust that it draws from the clients. The article reveals that in hospice, there are no conflicting interests, owing to the structure that hospices have implemented and the evidence based guiding procedure that hospice environments offer. Critical assessment or evaluation Critical assessment reveals weaknesses and strengths of the research that the author did. The author of course uses multiple methods of data collection to strengthen the validity of the results. The strength and weaknesses are discussed below. Strength of the research The research covers a large number of information related to hospice before coming to conclusion. She uses various sources of information to demonstrate the relationship between personality and work quality. Cindy does a lot of research and makes adequate references in analyzing the study before nature of hospice works, including the past and the present usage of professionalism. She demonstrates a great understanding of the behavioral attributes and their implications on the society. Secondly, the author demonstrates an understanding of the fact that emotions are inevitable and requires a systematic approach to be able to handle them professionally. Additionally, the methodology of the research is a systematic approach to qualitative assessment, whose interpretation is easy for the stakeholders to understand and apply. Weaknesses of the research The article uses a controversial topic of death, to which many readers may demonstrate a variety of reactions. It also uses qualitative data and information whose relativity creates an impression of prejudiced analysis. The research method of observation specifically involves personalized ideas, leading to manipulated conclusions. References Bulkin, W., 1992. The Physician and Hospice Care: Roles, Attitudes, and Issues. London: Routledge. Cain, C. L., 2012. Integrating dark humor and compassion: identities and presentation of self in the front and back regions of hospice. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 41 (6), pp. 668-694. Read More