TY - JOUR
T1 - Illness narratives and chronic patients’ sustainable employability
T2 - The impact of positive work stories
AU - Brokerhof, Inge
AU - Ybema, J.F.
AU - Bal, Matthijs
PY - 2020/2/10
Y1 - 2020/2/10
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Mixed-methods
KW - emotions
KW - experiment
KW - identification
KW - illness narratives
KW - narrative impact
KW - narratives
KW - possible future work selves
KW - psychology
KW - sustainable employability
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85079237557&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85079237557&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0228581
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0228581
M3 - Article
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 15
SP - 1
EP - 17
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 2
M1 - e0228581
ER -