HELPING PROFESSIONALS - THE BLESS AND THE

BURDEN OF HELPING
Ioana Drjan, Lecturer PhD. West University of Timisoara, Educational Sciences Department,
ioana.darjan@e-uvt.ro
MihaelaTomi, Senior Lecturer, PhD. West University of Timisoara, Social Work Department
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The experimentation of stress, either acute or prolonged, major stressful events or daily
annoying and disturbing little facts, is a risk factor in developing psychopathology. The
helping professionals, dealing directly with the lives of those in need, are particularly prone
to burnout and exhaustion and secondary traumatic stress.
A resilient factor for these professionals is theirs conflict management style, theirs ability to
express assertively theirs emotions and to solve efficiently the conflictive situations. In this
paper we intend to assess the impact of the life stressful events on the ability to cope with
adverse circumstances and the relation between conflict management style and job
satisfaction and burnout.
Our inters in these themes are both theoretical (as we are researchers) and practical (as we
are, at the same time, teachers training future psychologists, special educators, social
workers, and so on).
KEY CONCEPTS
JOB SATISFACTION is an affective reaction to an individuals work situation, it can
be defined as an overall feeling about ones job or career or in terms of specific facets
of the job or career
Job Demands-Resources Model (JD-R model) , a theoretical approach that tries to
explain the relationship between psycho-social working conditions and well-being,
states that the work environment is characterized by two general categories: JOB
DEMANDS and JOB RESOURCES
Side-effects of helping professions:
Compassion Satisfaction (CS), representing the positive aspects of helping
Compassion Fatigue (CF), representing the negative aspects of helping (burnout
and secondary traumatic stress).
KEY CONCEPTS (2)
Conflict and conflict management style
Gray & Starke (1984) define conflict as the behavior express by a person or group with the
intention to inhibit the attainment of goals by another person or group
four main types of conflict in organizations: intraindividual conflict, interindividual
conflict, intragroup conflict, and intergroup conflict
Ruble and Thomas model of conflict behavior : avoiding conflict all together
(uncooperative and unassertive), making too many exceptions (cooperative and
unassertive), competing anytime a conflict arises (assertive and uncooperative),
collaborating (assertive and cooperative), compromising, which serves as a middle ground
for both assertiveness and cooperativeness (Thomas-Kilmann model , 1977) .
THE OBJECTIVES AND HYPOTHESIS OF THE STUDY
First objective is descriptive and aim to discover if there is a specific style of conflict
management of helping professional from Romania and to assess their professional
satisfaction and burnout.
H1: Helping professions have a specific culture of conflict management, engaging a
conflict management style based on collaboration instead of competition.
Second objective: to analyze the relation between conflict management styles and
professional satisfaction and burnout.
H2: There are significant differences in professional satisfaction and burnout
between professionals with different conflict management styles.
PARTICIPANTS
56 subjects in helping professions.
91,2% female; 8,2% male.
psychologists (46,4%), teachers (35,7%), social workers (5,4%), medical
staff (5,4) or others (6,4%).
mean age is 35,8 years (s=7,62)
experience is on average 9,8 years (s=6,33).
clients: children (67,9%), adults (7,1%), both children and adults (25%).
INSTRUMENTS
a 15 item scale [14] that measures five different styles (collaborating, avoiding,
competing, accommodating and compromising). The Romanian version has a
good reliability (=.738). The scale is Likert type with five levels and three items
for each style.
Professional quality of life scale (ProQOL) in order to measure the professional
burnout and satisfaction. The scale is Likert type with five levels and has 10 items
for each of the three measured dimensions (compassion satisfaction, burnout
and secondary traumatic stress). The Romanian translated version has reliability
coefficients close to the original scale (=.748, compassion satisfaction =.825,
burnout =.574 and secondary traumatic stress =.724).
RESULTS
Preferred conflict management style
Only 41 subjects have a clear style of conflict management: 43,9% - collaborating style, 31,7% -
competing style, 14,6% - accommodating style, 4,9% - avoiding style, 4,9% - compromising styles
Conflict management style Statistics
Collaborating mean=6,47, s=2,20
Competing mean =7,03
Accommodating mean=7,45
Compromising mean= 7.87
Avoiding mean= 9,40
RESULTS: LEVEL OF PROFESSIONAL SATISFACTION AND FATIGUE
(SUBSCALES: BURNOUT AND SECONDARY TRAUMATIC STRESS)
Our sample could be described by moderate to low JOB SATISFACTION, but also only moderate to low
burnout and secondary traumatic stress.
94.8% -moderate job satisfaction
3.4% reported high job satisfaction
1.7% percent perceives low job satisfaction.
In terms of JOB FATIGUE, the subjects reported moderate to low burnout and secondary traumatic stress.
BURNOUT
55.2% - low burnout
44.8%) experience moderate burnout.
SECONDARY TRAUMATIC STRESS
34.5%- moderate level
65.6% - low level.
RESULTS: CONFLICT MANAGEMENT STYLES
INFLUENCE ON JOB SATISFACTION AND FATIGUE
We applied one-way ANOVA procedure in order to see if there are significant
differences between the samples with different conflict management style in
terms of their level of burnout and secondary traumatic stress.
The overall results show that there are no significant differences in
satisfaction (F (4,36)=2.274, p=.08) or burnout (F(4,36)=1,187, p=.333), but
there is a significant difference on secondary traumatic stress (F(4, 36)= 3,06,
p=.029).
However, the post hoc comparison didnt highlight any significant differences
between two groups, the most significant difference being between avoiding
and collaborating styles.
DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
Our findings were that caring professionals are indeed using specific styles of managing
conflicts. We have predicted that they are using collaboration and compromising styles, but
our findings prove that the second style of managing conflicts is competing. Consistently
with our predictions is the fact that they use assertive styles instead of strategies of ignoring
and avoiding solving the conflicts.
Our prediction that different conflict management styles are influencing the job satisfaction
and levels of burnout was not supported. This doesnt mean that the conflict management
style has no effect, but in our sample we couldnt highlight such relation. This could be the
case that the level of burnout was quite homogenous as well as the conflict managing style.
It is possible that those teachers which use avoidant strategies have a higher level of stress.
The limited number of teachers with non-assertive style does not allow us to make a clear
statement, but we think that the issue need further studies.
DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
In terms of job satisfaction and fatigue, we may conclude that this is a positive picture of
investigated helping professionals. It means that the positive reinforcements they receive
from their work exceed potentially bad outcomes (senses of inefficacy, job related irrational
fears and worries). These results support the conclusions that these professionals are most
likely good influences for their colleagues and their organizations, that they are liked by
their clients/patients. This type of professionals benefits from engagement, opportunities
for continuing education and career development.
These findings sustained the necessity of continuing education for helping professionals
and the importance of their periodical (self)assessment and constant preoccupation for
their well-being. For attaining these objectives, we consider that the supervision relations
are crucial for these helping professionals, in order to debrief burdening issues and to learn
how to understand, accept and solve work-related issues. Continuing education for helping
professionals could focus on improving their abilities (for example, listening abilities) and on
developing their assertive and collaborative ways of interactions and of managing conflicts.
THANK YOU!
ioana.darjan@e-uvt.ro