Exploring the Relationship between Ethics Stress and Burnout

Background: The ability to “Demonstrate Ethical and Professional Behavior” is the first of nine core competencies identified by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE, 2017). However, the organizational and interpersonal complexities of practice can make identifying and navigating ethics a challenge. Within the social work literature, employment related stress, including role stress, has consistently been associated with increased burnout. This study theorizes that ethics stress (i.e., the stress associated with making ethical decisions in practice) may operate as a unique form of role stress, originating from the degree to which an employee is supported in, or prepared to, negotiate ethical challenges. It was hypothesized that ethics stress would predict burnout when controlling for type of practice setting and length of time in the profession.

Methods: As part of a study on professional quality of life, self-administered, paper surveys were mailed to the home addresses of 270 randomly selected Licensed Bachelor Social Workers whose names appeared on one mid-Atlantic state’s licensing list. The final analytic sample included 56 individuals, of whom, 91% identified as female with an average age of 49.4 years. Fifty-seven percent identified as white only while 41% identified with at least one minority racial or ethnic group. Respondents reported being social workers for an average of 22.5 years and the majority (91%) reported working 30+ hours per week.

A hierarchical regression model was used to test whether ethics stress is a unique predictor of burnout when controlling for years in practice as well as type of practice. Ethics stress was measured via the 21-item affective subscale of the Ethics Stress Scale, a 52-item measure that was developed within the nursing literature (Raines, 1994). Burnout was measured via Stamm’s (2010) Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL). Bivariate relationships were also explored between all predictor and outcome variables.

Results: After controlling for years in practice and type of practice, ethics stress predicted 12% of the variance in burnout. Both type of practice (p = .013) and ethics stress (p = .006) were individually significant in the model, R² = .20, F(3, 52) = 5.65, p = .002. Individuals who identified working in Administration/Management, Community Organizing/Advocacy, Training/Consultation, or Academia (Research and/or Teaching) had burnout scores that were 3.6 points (7%) lower than those who identified as working in direct practice with individuals or groups, holding other variables constant. Further, for every one-point increase in burnout, an individual’s ethics stress score decreased (indicating an increase in ethics stress) by .16 points.

Implications: Results support the theory that ethics stress operates as a unique form of role stress in relation to burnout and that those in direct practice settings may be particularly vulnerable. Social work supervisors and educators should consider the unique role that ethical decision-making plays in social work practice and identify how they might develop, deliver, and advocate for ethics specific training and supports to mitigate the impact of ethics related stress.