Multisite Examination of Vicarious Trauma Experienced By MSW Students during Internship

This study further examined a prior single site pilot study to several MSW programs regarding the extent to which MSW students had a personal history of trauma and the extent to which students were exposed to clients with traumatic experiences during their field placement. In addition, students were evaluated for signs of vicarious trauma (VT) and/or retraumatization (RT). Students from a large urban private university in the western United States, a medium size public university from the northeastern United States, and a small private college from western Canada were queried with quantitative self-report instruments administered during the fall and spring semester field placements. These instruments screen for a history of trauma and for VT and RT and include: Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire – Mini Version (ACE) Anda (2006); Impact of Event Scale (IES) Weiss & Marmar (1997); Trauma Screening Questionnaire (TSQ) Brewin et al. (2002); and the Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale (STSS) Bride (1999). These same students were also invited to participate in qualitative interviews on a voluntary basis at the end of the spring semester. Semi- structured interviews expand on participant responses to the quantitative instrument and consist of open ended questions:  1. Please tell me about any life experiences you may have had that you think might make you more sensitive to traumatic symptoms, feeling, or other responses. 2. Please tell me about the events that took place in your field placement that you experienced as traumatizing.  SPSS was used in quantitative data analysis while NVivo software facilitated analysis of qualitative data. Mean pre-test scores on the STSS were 30.3 indicating moderate levels of stress, IES-R scores were 1.7 indicating low levels of traumatic events within the past week, TSQ scores were 2.1 indicating low risk for PTSD, and ACE scores were 2.1. Correlations, 2-tailed at 0.01, revealed a correlation between the STSS and IES-R of .724, between the IES-R and the TSQ of .736, and all instruments with the TSQ .789, the STSS .876, and the IES-R .961. Finding from the pilot study found students were exposed to traumatic events in their internships leaving them at risk for vicarious trauma and secondary traumatic stress. Social Work faculty must prepare students for work with this population by educating them about Trauma Informed Care for all clients and trauma specific care for those students who will be working directly with this population to alleviate diagnoses and symptoms of trauma for clients and to prevent trauma symptoms in social work students.