The relationship between work environment, sense of coherence and compassion fatigue amongst employee assistance programme (EAP) practitioners

摘要

ABSTRACTudThe negative impacts of trauma on clients are well known. However, the negative impact ofudworking with traumatized clients on the counselor or helper has received less attention in theudliterature. Similarly, the contributions of certain work environments to experiences of compassionudfatigue and the role of personality characteristics have gone unnoticed, especially in the SouthudAfrican context. The aim of this research is to examine the relationships between compassionudfatigue, sense of coherence and work environment variables (job control, workload and collegialudsupport), and to determine whether sense of coherence moderates the relationship betweenudwork environment and compassion fatigue on a sample of Employee Assistance Programmeud(EAP) practitioners in the South African organisational context (both public and private sectors).udThe current study adopted a non-experimental research design, categorised as cross-sectionaludand correlational. A non-probability sampling procedure was utilised. A sample of ninety-nineud(99) EAP practitioners was obtained. A 10-items Job Control Scale (Wall, Jackson andudMullarkey, 1995), Workload and Collegial Support Scale by Dewe (1987) 11-items each, a 30-uditems Compassion Fatigue Self-Test Scale (Figley, 1995), and 13-items Orientation to LifeudQuestionnaire (QLQ-13/SOC-13) by Antonovsky (1987; 1993) were administered. Resultsudindicate that the sample in the current study were at higher risk of experiencing compassionudfatigue. There was a positive significant relationship between workload, collegial support andudcompassion fatigue, a negative insignificant correlation between job control and compassionudfatigue, and positive insignificant relationship between sense of coherence and compassionudfatigue. The results between sense of coherence and the work environment variables wereudinsignificant. Finally, sense of coherence was only found to moderate the relationship betweenudworkload and compassion fatigue and the relationship between collegial support andudcompassion fatigue.