Campus Location

Abilene Campus (Residential)

Date of Award

5-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Department

Social Work

Degree Name

Master of Science

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Kyeonghee Jang

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Wayne Paris

Third Committee Member or Committee Reader

Dolores Flores

Abstract

COVID-19 has caused job stress and exhaustion across all areas of healthcare, and especially in hospitals as they have tried to cope with wave after wave of case surges. Two years into the pandemic, we have more treatments, and the development of vaccines has changed the risk and infection rates, so hospitals are not as overwhelmed. However, we are still seeing concerning staff shortages in healthcare, and it is being attributed to burnout caused by the effect COVID has had on work environments. This study measured rates of shared trauma, perceived organizational support, and burnout among rural healthcare workers in West Texas, and hypothesized that shared trauma would increase rates of burnout, organizational support would decrease rates of burnout, and organizational support would moderate the effect of shared trauma on burnout. The study found no easy explanation for a relationship between these factors and suggests that previous studies might have underestimated the complexity of these relationships. It is also possible that personal opinions on COVID may be affecting scores in this study, so future research should consider controlling for perceptions about COVID and investigate this potential confounding variable.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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