Hospital Social Workers and Indirect Trauma Exposure: An Exploratory Study of Contributing Factors

Abstract

This article explores the predictive ability of empathy (measured by the Interpersonal Reactivity Index), emotional separation (measured by the Maintenance of Emotional Separation Scale), occupational stress (measured by the Work-Related Strain Inventory), and social support (measured by the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support) on secondary traumatic stress (STS) (measured by the Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale) in hospital social workers. This cross-sectional study used a sample of 121 trauma center social workers who were predominantly master's-level prepared women with an average of 15.8 years' experience. Emotional separation and occupational stress were the strongest predictors of STS, explaining 49 percent of the variance, which suggests that hospital social workers need to be able to emotionally differentiate during work with patients and families and manage organizational stressors to minimize indirect trauma reactions.

Indirect exposure to client trauma and the impact on trainee clinical psychologists: Secondary traumatic stress or vicarious traumatization?

“…Nelson-Gardell and Harris (2003) found years of experience in field as a child welfare worker neither correlated with or was a predictor of CF scores. This finding is similar to Badger et al (2008), Deighton et al (2007) and Ennis and Horne (2003).…”

“…Studies limited to bivariate correlation analyses (Badger et al, 2008;Deighton et al, 2007) are considered to be the weakest in this section. From these studies, only one study (Deighton et al 2007) shows evidence for STS; evidence from the other studies are problematic due to methodological difficulties.…”

“…However, neither Sprang et al (2007) or Deighton et al (2007) use the STSS to measure levels of trauma symptoms, which is considered to be a methodologically stronger outcome measure of symptoms specific to the STS model. Only two studies include the STSS (Badger et al, 2008; but these are methodologically weak.…”

An investigation into compassion fatigue and self-compassion in acute medical care hospital nurses: a mixed methods study

“…Each of the STSS 17 items and 3 subscales corresponds with criteria B, C and D in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [72], used in the diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The STSS has demonstrated construct validity through convergent, discriminant and factor analyses [36,73] and high levels of internal consistency reliability [38,74,75].…”

Exploration du vécu de l’usure de compassion chez les infirmières oeuvrant en oncologie clinique

“…Les équipes de recherche ont conclu que l'UC survient dans un éventail de professions de la santé notamment les suivantes : travail social, recherche clinique, ergothérapie et physiothérapie, consultation génétique et médecine (Adams, Figley & Bascarino, 2008;Badger, Royse & Craig, 2008;Pickett, Brennan, Greenberg et al, 1994;Stebnicki, 2002;Costa, 2005;Benoit, McCarthy & LeRoy, 2007;Pfifferling & Gilley, 1999). Les études indiquent que les infirmières sont particulièrement susceptibles d'être touchées par l'UC étant donné que la compassion et l'empathie font partie des valeurs fondamentales auxquelles elles ont recours pour effectuer leur travail (Figley, 1995).…”