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
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Christian, Cassie, "Burnout and Shared Trauma Rates Among Hospital Employees Due to COVID-19" (2022). Digital Commons @ ACU, Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 459.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/etd/459