Abstract: The Effect of Online and Offline Mindfulness Workshops on Stress, Burnout, and Professional Quality of Life (Society for Social Work and Research 29th Annual Conference)

Schedule:

Saturday, January 18, 2025

Jefferson B, Level 4 (Sheraton Grand Seattle)

* noted as presenting author

Florin Lazar, PhD, Professor, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

Ovidiu Pop, PhD, Lecturer, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

Lucian Alecu, Lecturer, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

Adrian Luca, Lecturer, University of Bucharest, Romania

Georgiana Rentea, Associate professor, University of Bucharest, Romania

Daniela Gaba, Lecturer, University of Bucharest, Buxcharest, Romania

Anca Mihai, Lecturer, University of Bucharest, Romania

Elen-Silvana Bobarnat (Crivoi), Phd student, University of Bucharest, Romania

Background and Purpose:

Social workers’ level of stress and burnout are among the highest within the helping professions. In the context of the different crises (e.g. health, social, economic, political, climate), the quality of their professional life might diminish as well. While face-to-face mindfulness-based interventions (MBI) have already proved effective in reducing stress and burnout, there is scarce evidence on the impact of online MBIs on social workers’ mental health.

The aim of the current study was to test the effectiveness of an 8 weeks online MBI (8 sessions, Group 1, n=29) vs. a face-to-face 4 weeks MBI (4 sessions, Group 2, n=10) on social workers’ perceived stress, burnout and professional quality of life compared with a control group (n=15).

Methods:

Using an experimental design, registered social workers from Romania recruited between November 2022 and January 2023, attended one of the two interventions between March-May (G1) and October-November (G2) 2023, as part of a randomized controlled trial. Validated measures of stress (Perceived Stress Questionnaire- PSQ), burnout (Copenhagen Burnout Inventory-CBI), and professional quality of life (ProQoL, with two components, compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue) were used. Data analysis using SPSS 28.0 included one-way ANOVA and Paired-Samples T-Test. .

Results:

The results of One-way ANOVA show that online mindfulness intervention had more influence on perceived stress and burnout, resulting in significant differences between the participants in the intervention and the control group. There were also significant differences between participants in online mindfulness program and face-to-face intervention, the latter registering higher stress levels than the former. There were no significant differences between the control group (n=15) and the face-to-face mindfulness programme for either stress, burnout, or professional quality of life. Conducting a Paired-Samples T-Test and comparing the results before and after the analysis for each group, we register higher levels of stress, burnout, compassion satisfaction and fatigue, though not-significant.

Conclusions and Implications:

Unexpectedly, our findings suggest that online MBI is more effective in reducing stress and burnout than face-to-face MBI. Also if the program has a longer duration (8 weeks vs. 4 weeks) the results are more significant. One of the changes of the Coronavirus pandemic seems to be the preference over online vs. face-to-face activities (i.e. MBI), including those designed to support the self-care of the social workers. However, these results may be influenced by the rather low number of participants and unequal distribution of the samples. The use of online self-care practices, such as online MBI, could be a new trend for the coming years to support the social workers’ mental health.