An Examination of Occupational Health Phenomena: Secondary Traumatic Stress, Compassion Fatigue, and Burnout Among Social Workers in Montana

Purpose: The experience of working on a daily basis with challenging cases and highly traumatized populations can have a significant impact on the emotional well-being and ability of social workers to effectively perform their jobs. This study examines how licensed social workers (LCSWs) in Montana are impacted by secondary traumatic stress (STS), compassion fatigue (CF), compassion satisfaction (CS), and burnout. It also seeks to explain how specific organizational factors might potentially reduce the impact of these phenomena.

Methods: This study utilized a mixed methodology, using a mail survey (N=256) comprised of standardized measures and original items. Measures included the Social Work Demographics/Workplace Questionnaire, the Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale/STSS (Bride 2005), and the Professional Quality of Life Scale / ProQOL (Hudnall-Stamm, 1999). Descriptive and bivariate analyses were conducted to explore the prevalence and nature of STS, CF, CS, and burnout in the sample, including subgroup comparisons and analysis of organizational factors. A smaller sample (N=15) of follow-up interviews were conducted to collect qualitative data. Template analysis was used for the qualitative data and credibility of findings was evaluated through member checks.

Results: Quantitative findings indicate that social workers in the sample experience statistically significant levels of STS, compassion fatigue and burnout. Using two different methods recommended by Bride (2007) to interpret STS scores, we found that 42% of the sample reported the presence of STS, and 35.7% scored over 38 on the STSS, indicating presence of post-traumatic stress-like symptoms. The most frequently reported symptom was intrusive thoughts related to work with clients, with 55.1 percent of respondents indicating that they thought about their work with traumatized clients without intending to, confirming Bride's (2007) findings. Respondents also reported psychological distress in response to reminders of their work with traumatized clients (27%), physiological reactions (18%), and the presence of disturbing dreams related to their work (10%).

The mean score on the Compassion Satisfaction subscale was slightly above the mean score of 37 reported in the ProQOL manual. On the Burnout subscale there was a mean score of 19.49, this is 2.5 below the expected mean score of 22. On the Compassion Fatigue/Secondary Trauma subscale, there was a mean score of 10.9 again, lower than the reported mean of 13 in the ProQOL manual.

Themes from the qualitative findings included the impact of STS on early career social workers, the role of compassion satisfaction in buffering STS, and the importance of family support, job sharing and other workplace resources, and peer support as mitigating factors in STS.

Implications for Practice: Implications for occupational health issues are paramount, especially as they relate to the psychological and emotional well-being of a workforce engaged in challenging, stressful, and potentially traumatic work. As peer support was a central factor in mitigating STS, SF, and burnout policy and practice changes that promote peer support are needed. We offer cost effective and easily implemented solutions to these work stress issues. As this is a relatively new research area, recommendations for further research are offered.