OCCUPATIONAL WELL-BEING AND BURNOUT IN PERSONAL SUPPORT WORKERS WORKING LONG TERM CARE FACILITIES

Abstract

Personal Support Workers (PSWs) who work in nursing homes may be at risk of developing burnout; however, those PSWs who meet their occupational needs may have a decreased risk. This study was designed to examine the relation between burnout and occupational well-being in a sample of PSWs working in nursing homes. PSWs working in two nursing homes were recruited to complete the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and the Occupational Well-Being Questionnaire (OWBQ) (N=20). The MBI generates three subscale scores, that is, Emotional Exhaustion (EE), Depersonalization (DP), and Personal Accomplishment (PA). Persons with higher levels of burnout are expected to score higher on the EE and DP subscales and lower on the PA subscale. Rasch analysis was used to convert participant ordinal responses to the OWBQ into equal interval linear occupational well-being measures (in logits). A moderate inverse association was found between participants’ OWB measures and their MBI EE subscale scores (r=-0.41, p=0.07) whereas only a low inverse association (r=-0.37, p=0.11) and a low positive association (r=0.25, p=0.30) was found between participants’ OWB measures and their MBI DP and PA subscales respectively. Participants’ years of work experience were also moderately related to their MBI EE subscale scores (r=0.48, p=0.04). The findings of this study provide some evidence that there may be an association between the degree to which individuals are able to meet their occupational needs and the experience of burnout at work; however, further studies with larger samples using mixed methods are needed.