Perceived Role Clarity and Workplace Stress: Social Workers in Interdisciplinary Team in Healthcare Settings

Background and Purpose: Interdisciplinary care has long been recognized as an important component of effective rehabilitations for persons with injury such as traumatic brain injury. Due to the high rate of traumatic brain injury incidence and people living with significant disability as a result of the brain injury, social workers in healthcare are very likely to encounter at least one client who has sustained a traumatic brain injury. Often social workers in such interdisciplinary settings may encounter role blurring, which occurs when two or more different professionals are qualified to perform similar tasks. Role ambiguity can often lead to workplace stress. This study examined social workers’ perceived role clarity and workplace stress as members of interdisciplinary team in traumatic brain injury settings. It is hypothesized that factors such as perceived respect, value of self for team, and team collaboration will be positively associated with role clarity, and role clarity will be negatively associated with workplace stress.

Methods: A total of 37 participants responded to an online survey, majority of whom were female (86.5%), aged ranged from 25-65 years. Majority of participants have more than 10 years of social work practice in traumatic brain injury settings (60%) with both pediatric and adult patient population.

Results: The findings showed that role clarity was positively associated with perceived respect (r =.40, p <.05), value of self for team (r =.49, p <.01), and team collaboration (r =.43, p <.01). There was no statistically significant association between workplace stress and role clarity, although the relationship was in the expected direction. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to further assess which factors contributed to role clarity (i.e. perceived respect, value of self for team, and team collaboration). Results showed that the combined factors accounted for 29% of the total variance in role clarity: R² =.35, Adjusted R^{2 =} .29, F change (3, 32) = 5.72, p <.01. The most significant predictor variable for role clarity was value of self for team, as determined by the standardized coefficient (β =.37, t = 2.30, p <.05).

Conclusions and Implications: Social workers in this study have clear expectations about their role in the interdisciplinary team and perceived themselves as valued member of the team. Majority of respondents reported very low or fairly low workplace stress. This may partly be due to role clarity experienced by social workers. Previous studies also report that clarity of role expectations and responsibilities among team members was associated with reduce workplace stress. Due to the complexities of traumatic brain injuries which require extensive treatment and rehabilitation services, interdisciplinary approach can effectively provide treatment and rehabilitation services incorporating bio-psycho-social and holistic approaches. Social work is vital to the interdisciplinary team in traumatic brain injury. As each professional group has its own culture and sets of values and norms, factors such as respect for each members’ expertise and collaborative communication style is vital for delivery of holistic care for patients in settings such as traumatic brain injury.