Date of Award

5-2021

Document Type

Project

Degree Name

Master of Social Work

Department

School of Social Work

First Reader/Committee Chair

Shon, Herb

Abstract

A practitioner’s reaction to client trauma can have both positive and negative impacts on the individual’s professional quality of life as well as the quality of services provided to the client. Professional quality of life embodies a practitioner’s compassion satisfaction, compassion fatigue, burnout, and vicarious trauma. While past research has focused on factors that negatively impact professional quality of life, the proposed research aimed to explore what individual and agency factors help to positively increase professional quality of life. The study utilized a mixed methods approach, which included the participants scores on the Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL) as well as in-depth exploratory questions via a Qualtrics survey. Results indicated that there were no significant differences between part-time and full-time practitioners, which could be explained by the unique struggles faced by students new to the field. Results did find a statistically significant difference in scores on “Burnout levels” between those with children and without, which could be explained by the unique effects on parenting due to COVID-19 pandemic (i.e. school closures, home schooling, added home duties). The added in-depth information gained through qualitative aspect of data furthers past research by providing specifics of possible interventions to be implemented by individuals and agencies in the future in order to increase professional quality of life of mental health practitioners.

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