Risk and protective factors impacting burnout in bilingual, Latina/o clinicians: An exploratory study.

Abstract

While there is a paucity of information in the research examining the training and professional experience of bilingual, Latina/o clinicians who provide mental health services in Spanish, a growing body of research has highlighted a series of challenges unique to this group of providers, including their concerns about burnout due to such challenges. This exploratory study is the first (to the best of our knowledge) to measure the levels of burnout among these clinicians and to examine the interrelationship between burnout and sociodemographic and individual characteristics. The extent to which these clinicians experience the challenges identified in previous studies was also investigated. Participants included 66 bilingual, English-Spanish, Latina/o clinicians. The results suggest that bilingual, Latina/o clinicians endorse lower degrees of burnout relative to their monolingual, English counterparts and that specific sociodemographic and individual characteristics influence burnout. Furthermore, the results support previous research findings highlighting the unique set of challenges encountered by these clinicians. Understanding the characteristics and dynamics that contribute to and protect against burnout has major implications for the training, support, and retention of bilingual, English-Spanish, Latina/o psychologists.

We are at Full Capacity”: Social care workers persisting through work-related stress in a new immigrant settlement context in the United States

“…This suggests that Latina/o providers may have a particularly acute sense of duty or calling to serve people of their own ethnic background. This is aligned to Teran et al's () findings which noted that Latina/o providers serving underserved Latina/os often experience a sense of pride and connection with their clients which could then serve as a protective factor against burnout for Latina/o clinicians.…”

“…Interestingly, increase in age was associated with greater reliance on motivational factors which could enhance coping skills associated with working in a low resource context. Older social care workers have been previously found to access greater use of coping skills to manage the stressors of social care work in a study of bilingual (English‐Spanish) providers (Teran et al, ). These findings have a number of practical implications.…”

“…Yet, in such new immigrant destination contexts, without an established community and network of immigrants, the role of social care workers is even more critical in providing support, and comfort as well as assisting recent immigrants’ navigation of complex American bureaucracy and available services (Negi, Cepeda, & Valdez, ). Multiple studies conducted in a variety of social care settings in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia indicate that conditions of scarcity can lead to work related stress, burn‐out, and have a deleterious impact on the quality of services delivered by social care workers (Judd, Dorozenko, & Breen, ; Quevillon, Gray, Erickson, Gonzalez, & Jacobs, ; Teran, Fuentes, Atallah, & Yang, ; Verdinelli & Biever, ). Much of the literature has focused on examining the causes of work stress and burnout in social care (Ahern, Sadler, Lamb, & Gariglietti, ; Bowden, Smith, Worker, & Boxall, ; Tartakovsky & Walsh, ), however, few focus on social care providers’ motivations and responses to work stress; and how providers positively respond and persist in their jobs despite such stressors (Lloyd, King, & Chenoweth, ; Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, ; Moore et al, ).…”

“…Bilingual social care providers have been found to experience, even within traditional immigrant settlement cities, additive and unique challenges in providing services to clients who have a native language other than English. Numerous studies have found bilingual social care providers experience higher workloads associated with their bilingual skills, their role as cultural brokers, and work to connect clients with existing and often sparse resources, and advocacy efforts to meet the linguistic and cultural needs of clients within their own organisations (Teran et al, ). Contributing factors of job stress for bilingual social care providers include extra work (such as, translating for other staff) due to lack of bilingual staff; supervisors’ pressure to serve as cultural brokers even when they may not have the same cultural background as clients; requests to provide Spanish‐language services with very little guidance or support (Verdinelli & Biever, ).…”

“…In fact, workers with high emotional exhaustion and high job satisfaction were active in finding ways to cope with work challenges and finding positive meaning in their work. Another study found that the pride and connection experienced in conjunction with the awareness of meeting the linguistic and mental health needs of an underserved population may serve as a protective factor against burnout for Latina/o clinicians (Teran et al, ).…”