Professional quality of life in nurses: Contribution for the validation of the Portuguese version of the Professional Quality of Life Scale-5 (ProQOL-5)

Abstract

Job stress and burnout are highly prevalent in healthcare professionals, and nurses in particular. Given its deleterious consequences not only for professionals' well-being but also for patients and organizations, it is important to have adequate measures to assess professional quality of life. This study aimed to offer a contribution for the Portuguese validation of the Professional Quality of Life Scale-5. This scale was designed to measure three dimensions of professional quality of life: compassion satisfaction, burnout, and compassion fatigue. The sample was composed by 390 nurses recruited from five public hospitals from Portugal north and center regions. Participants had on average 38.58 years of age (SD=9.10) and were mainly female, married, and practiced nursing in a variety of fields with an average of 15.66 (SD=9.09) years of practice. Results from the confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the original version of the scale had several problematic items and that a revised version showed superior model fit. In addition, results showed that female scored higher than men on Compassion Satisfaction. Also, nurses working in an oncology hospital had higher scores of Compassion Fatigue. Finally, higher scores of Burnout and Compassion Fatigue, and lower scores of Compassion Satisfaction, were associated with greater Depression, Anxiety, and Stress symptoms. The ProQOL-5 is thus an adequate instrument to assess professional quality of life in nurses and may be valuable for designing effective interventions to tackle burnout and compassion fatigue, and promote satisfaction with one's work.

Secondary traumatisation, burn-out and functional impairment: findings from a study of Danish child protection workers

“…However, most studies investigating the relationship between secondary traumatization and burnout have used ProQoL, with a recent meta-analysis reporting an overall average correlation of r = .69 between burnout and secondary traumatization which increased to r =.74 in studies where both constructs were measured using the ProQoL (Cieslak et al, 2014). This finding might lend support to studies that have suggested that items measuring secondary traumatization and burnout are in fact measuring one rather than two factors (Duarte, 2017;Heritage et al, 2018). Conversely, it has been suggested that the high correlation between secondary traumatization and burnout is partially accounted for by the general distress associated with both conditions (Stamm, 2010).…”

“…The strongest cross-factor loadings were seen for ST7 and ST11. ST11 (feeling 'on edge' about various things) has previously been suggested to measure 'wear and tear' associated with burnout over secondary traumatization (Duarte, 2017), and the content of ST7 (difficulties separating personal life from life as a helper) resembles work-family conflict that has previously been associated with both burnout and secondary traumatization in child-protection workers (Baugerud, Vangbaek, & Melinder, 2018). Hence, these items appear to be measuring experiences that are associated with both burnout and secondary traumatization.…”

“…However, such cross-factor loadings are reasonably expected across constructs measuring adverse experiences related to human service work, and even small cross-factor loadings (.10) might lead to biased estimates of model-fit (Asparouhov, Muthén, & Morin, 2015;Marsh, Morin, Parker, & Kaur, 2014). Hence, if cross-factor loadings of items measuring burnout and secondary traumatization exist, studies using CFA to model the constructs as distinct would produce a suboptimal fit to the data as previously seen (Choi, 2018;Duarte, 2017). This would in turn lead to potentially erroneous conclusions of lack of discriminant validity.…”

“…The Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQoL: Stamm, 2010) is one of the most widely used measures of secondary traumatization and operationalizes the construct as part of the compassion fatigue framework including burnout and compassion satisfaction (Cieslak et al, 2014;Stamm, 2010). However, research evaluating the psychometric properties of ProQol have produced mixed findings: some studies support the discriminant validity of secondary traumatization and burnout while questioning the validity of single items (Galiana, Arena, Oliver, Sansó, & Benito, 2017;Ghorji, Keshavarz, Ebadi, & Nasiri, 2018;Lago & Codo, 2013), whereas other studies fail to support the discriminant validity entirely (Choi, 2018;Duarte, 2017;Heritage, Rees, & Hegney, 2018), suggesting that selected items measuring secondary traumatization and burnout should be merged to measure a single construct of compassion fatigue (Heritage et al, 2018). Particularly the validity of item 2, being strongly preoccupied with more than one client, has been questioned across different language versions of the ProQoL (Galiana et al, 2017;Lago & Codo, 2013).…”

Panorama da Qualidade de Vida Profissional entre Trabalhadores que Prestam Cuidados Paliativos no Brasil

“…A consistência interna para essa amostra foi .854 para satisfação por compaixão, .762 para fadiga por compaixão e .626 para burnout. Em outros estudos em que se utilizou a versão em português dessa escala, as estimações de consistência interna foram .88 para satisfação de compaixão, .82 para fadiga por compaixão e .86 para burnout (Duarte, 2017).…”