“She takes rest as seriously as working:” Communicative resilience and professional caregivers’ meanings of rest

ABSTRACT

Are resilient employees so tough that they neglect to rest? To answer this question, eleven extraordinarily resilient professional caregivers (positive deviants [PD]) were interviewed about their meanings and practices of rest. Additionally, five professionals who scored extremely low in resilience and four who were average were also interviewed. Analysis of interviews revealed that PD caregivers held multifaceted interpretive schema of rest. Namely, they embraced bounded physicality, the limited ability to engage in space and time. In turn, they viewed rest as a (a) strategic defense and (b) normal indispensable joy, and practiced rest through (c) multimodal care. Thus, findings implied that resilient employees make rest a priority. The paper contributes to the communicative theory of resilience and the meanings of work literatures.

KEYWORDS:

• Communicative theory of resilience
• meanings of rest
• caregivers
• positive deviance case selection
• positive organizational communication scholarship

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethical statement

The IRB at the University of Oklahoma (Vice-Chair: Kendra Williams-Diehm) granted ethical approval for this study in June 2022, ensuring that the research meets all national and international guidelines for research on humans (IRB#14674). After initial submission, the study was exempted from further review because the research posed no more than minimal risk to participants and ensured participant anonymity.

Conflict of interest statement

In accordance with Taylor & Francis policy and our ethical obligation as researchers, we disclose that there are no competing interests to report.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a dissertation fellowship grant from the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma.