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Linda Kreitzer, Sharon E Brintnell, Wendy Austin, Institutional Barriers to Healthy Workplace Environments: From the Voices of Social Workers Experiencing Compassion Fatigue, The British Journal of Social Work, Volume 50, Issue 7, October 2020, Pages 1942–1960, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcz147
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Abstract
The good health and well-being of health care professionals is increasingly an important issue and one that is under threat due to dominant neo-liberal economic factors. These factors influence health care service delivery which in turn focuses less on employee workplace satisfaction and more on profit-making corporate business models. More work with less pay/benefits, less time to work with clients and the focus on outcomes has created workplaces in which employees are experiencing negative organisational cultures that, in turn, affects their health and well-being. One negative effect is compassion fatigue (CF). In Canada, a national inter-disciplinary research project was conducted for health professionals (n = 52) who self-identified as experiencing CF. From this research, an analysis of a sub-sample of the data of fourteen social workers was conducted identifying specific institutional factors that participants described as creating conditions for their CF. These factors are presented including: (i) cost-effective services within time constraints and political climates; (ii) erosion of relationship building; (iii) lack of communication between managers and front line workers; (iv) cutbacks in services; (v) climate of fear; and (vi) outcome measurement requirements. These concerns related to workplace environments and the health and well-being of health professionals are discussed.
