Speakers
Ms. Evelyn CHAN
Hong Kong
Work is made meaningful not just by its material rewards, but also by the values ascribed to it by practitioners. These values drive practitioners forward despite adverse conditions, and shape their work and careers. Work for doctors in public hospitals in Hong Kong combines structured professional codes of conduct, extensive contact with the public on whom their work exercises a large impact, and an extremely stressful, high-stakes environment where they are pressed for time and resources. This combination makes the question of what human values and meanings sustain, nourish and improve their work a valuable area of research, with important social uses.
This paper will share the preliminary results of a qualitative study that is based on narrative interviews with twenty-seven medical doctors in Hong Kong who had worked in the public hospital sector for ten years or more at the time of the interviews. The study's aims are to explore the meanings and values the interviewees constructed and ascribed to their work and careers, and to investigate how they had coped with hardships and crises in their work. The paper will focus on a discussion of several selected themes that have so far emerged from an analysis of the interviews. The paper will also tentatively suggest ways of addressing these results, and welcome further feedback from the audience.
