Obstacles to Good Practice and O mission of the C oncept of M odesty in the C are of the E lderly Study Carried Out in the Context of Training and in a Professional Environment

Résumé

Professionals who take care of the elderly in the context of non-medical care are subject to a logic of profitability and to a heavy mental and physical load (just like health professionals), this is the case for the professional working in health facility for the elderly. With the help of a corpus collected in a real working context, we will have been able to realize that from the training, apprentices are confronted to an omission of modesty on the part of the professionals observed within the various internships which are provided to them. Modesty remains however taught and used in the gestures of the teacher. Health care workers are in fact subject to a logic of profitability and efficiency due to the workload and lack of time. However, this imperative of profitability can force professionals to eliminate all actions that would not be the most profitable. If a professional saves time on the treatment by omitting modesty, he will save time in the short term and will certainly be more profitable in appearance, but in the long term he will undoubtedly lose this saved time. In addition, recruitment policies now encourage the hiring of people with an immigrant background, yet modesty remains a culturally situated concept. It will thus be a question of reflecting on the concept of modesty, its use by health care workers and the obstacles that prevent its use.