Burnout Among Social Workers in Integrated Care

Burnout has a negative and pervasive impact on individual workers, employee groups, and organizations. At the organizational level, role conflict and role ambiguity in human service settings have consistently been associated with burnout (Fraser et al., 2018; Jackson et al., 1986, Maslach, 1993, & O’Connor et al., 2018; Thomas et al., 2014). The theoretical orientations which underpin burnout are schema theory, causal attribution theory, and the situational model of illness, while classical organizational theory and role theory provide justification for the inclusion of role conflict and role ambiguity factors and their association with burnout. While role conflict and role ambiguity are associated with burnout in many workplace settings, the prevalence of burnout and the relationship between role conflict, role ambiguity, and burnout is largely understudied within the context of social workers in integrated care workplace settings. Integrated care involves the combined provision of physical and behavioral healthcare services through a highly collaborative approach to whole person care. To fill the gap in knowledge pertaining to this topic area, this cross-sectional, descriptive study examined four research questions. This study explored burnout among social workers in integrated care. It also investigated the relationship between previous training in integrated care and burnout among social workers in integrated care. It also analyzed the relationship between role conflict and burnout among social workers in integrated care. Lastly, it examined the relationship between role ambiguity and burnout among social workers in integrated care. Results indicated that participants reported three types of burnout: Personal burnout, work burnout, and client burnout. Additionally, there was no relationship found between previous integrated care training and all three burnout domains. There was a positive relationship found between role conflict and role ambiguity and all three subscales of burnout.