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

Abstract

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.