Psychological Resilience of Volunteers in a South African Health Care Context: A Salutogenic Approach and Hermeneutic Phenomenological Inquiry.

Antoni Barnard,Aleksandra Furtak

doi:10.3390/ijerph17082922

Abstract

Volunteering in non-Western countries, such as South Africa, is subject to poor infrastructure, lack of resources, poverty-stricken conditions and often conducted by volunteers from lower socio-economic spheres of society. Sustaining the well-being of volunteers in this context is essential in ensuring their continued capacity to volunteer. To do so, it is important to understand the psychological resilience of these volunteers and the resistance resources they employ to positively adapt to their challenging work-life circumstances. The aim of this qualitative hermeneutic phenomenological study was to explore volunteers’ psychological resilience from a salutogenic perspective. In-depth interviews were conducted with eight volunteers servicing government-run hospitals. Data were analysed through phenomenological hermeneutical analysis. Findings show a characteristic work-life orientation to be at the root of volunteers’ resilience. Their work-life orientation is based on a distinct inner drive, an other-directedness and a “calling” work orientation. It is proposed that this work-life orientation enables volunteers in this study context, to cope with and positively adapt to challenging work-life circumstances and continue volunteering. The elements of their work-life orientation are presented as intrapersonal strength resources fundamental to their psychological resilience. It is suggested that organisations invest in developmental interventions that endorse and promote these intrapersonal strengths.

Highlights

Volunteering is an essential and natural part of cultures across the world rendering significant multi-dimensional benefits to individuals, organisations and society [1,2,3,4]
The findings reported below focus on the themes constructed in the structural analysis and the discussion that follows reflect the comprehensive understanding
The three elements of their work-life orientation echo the sub-component dynamics of sense of coherence (SOC) and demonstrate how these dynamics are reflective of intrapersonal generalized resistance resources (GRR) that promote and sustain their psychological resilience

Summary

Introduction

Volunteering is an essential and natural part of cultures across the world rendering significant multi-dimensional benefits to individuals, organisations and society [1,2,3,4]. Volunteers contribute to economic development and boost socio-economic phenomena such as social cohesion, citizenship, community development and social transformation [3,5,6,7]. Per definition, volunteering is an unpaid, planned, proactive helping activity where someone’s time, effort and energy is given freely for the benefit of other people, groups or organisations [8] to help solve social problems [9]. To continue volunteering over time, such commitment typically incurs personal costs, frequently under very difficult personal and economic circumstances [10,11]. Even though volunteering holds physical and psychological well-being benefits for the individual [2,14,15], these benefits may be compromised by the challenges volunteers

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Discussion

Conclusion