Illness narratives and chronic patients' sustainable employability: The impact of positive work stories

The number of workers with a chronic disease is steadily growing in industrialized countries. To cope with and to give meaning to their illness, patients construct illness narratives, which are widely shared across patient societies, personal networks and the media. This study investigates the influ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2020-02, Vol.15 (2), p.e0228581-e0228581
Main Authors: Brokerhof, Inge M, Ybema, Jan Fekke, Bal, P Matthijs
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation, Psychological
Adolescent
Adult
Biology and Life Sciences
Career development planning
Careers
Chronic Disease - psychology
Chronic Disease - therapy
Chronic diseases
Chronic illnesses
Decision making
Diseases
Emotions
Employability
Employment
Female
Forecasts and trends
Gastrointestinal diseases
Humans
Industrialized countries
Inflammatory bowel diseases
Inflammatory Bowel Diseases - psychology
Inflammatory Bowel Diseases - therapy
Intestine
Job Satisfaction
Male
Medical personnel
Medical research
Medical screening
Medicine and Health Sciences
Mental health
Middle Aged
Motivation
Narration
Narratives
Netherlands - epidemiology
Occupational Health
Patient Participation
Patients
Social construction
Social research
Social Sciences
Social Support
Support groups
Sustainability
Workers
Young Adult
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Summary:The number of workers with a chronic disease is steadily growing in industrialized countries. To cope with and to give meaning to their illness, patients construct illness narratives, which are widely shared across patient societies, personal networks and the media. This study investigates the influence of these shared illness narratives on patient's working lives, by examining the impact of reading a positive work story versus negative work story on patients' sustainable employability. We expected that this relationship would be mediated by positive emotions and the extent to which the story enhanced awareness of desires future selves, and moderated by identification with story character. An online field experiment with 166 people with Inflammatory Bowel Disease in The Netherlands showed that while reading a positive story of a patient with the same condition significantly increased positive emotions, these emotions did not influence sustainable employability. However, reading a positive story was related to higher sustainable employability when patients became more aware of their desired possible future work selves. Finally, identification with the story character moderated the impact of story type on sustainable employability. This study showed that personal engagement with a positive work story of a fellow patient is related to higher sustainable employability. Findings can be helpful for health professionals to empower employees with a chronic disease.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0228581