A special section in the September issue of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journalopens in new window seeks to understand the wellness of the workforce that provides psychiatric rehabilitation services. Guest Editors Angela Rollins, Gary Morse, and Maria Monroe-DeVita discuss key takeaways.
What is the special issue about?
This special issue is dedicated to understanding the wellness of the workforce that provides psychiatric rehabilitation services. This workforce is the foundation of the healthcare system. Providing world-class care to consumers requires understanding how to support resilience among the providers. This special issue contains papers that grapple with the issue of worker well-being, specifically for psychiatric rehabilitation workers.
What is the significance of the issue?
Employee burnout has been an important topic in all of health care, even prior to the pandemic. But topics related to burnout and wellness have taken on a more urgent tone in the last year or so. We put out a call for papers focused on the wellness of the workforce who provide critical mental health services day in and day out so that we can better understand what resilience in the workforce looks like and how to support it.
Tell us about a few key takeaways.
Across all four studies, organizational support played an important role in employee well-being. Sklar and colleagues found that disruptive work changes during the pandemic had a negative effect on burnout and turnover intentions. A surprising finding was that personal resources were not able to buffer these negative impacts. That has implications for interventions: supporting staff coping skills may not be as effective as avoiding disruptions and increasing organizational trust. Rollins and colleagues also found several important themes around organizational support in promoting work engagement and preventing burnout. One highlighted the importance of working within an organizational culture focused on person-centered care, something that many staff see as their primary purpose for entering the mental health field. When other priorities or metrics detract from providing high-quality care, many people may disengage. Other themes highlighted the value of supervisory skills to reduce work hindrances, as well as the importance of organizational support for professional development and self-care.
Work autonomy also was an important factor in several studies. For instance, Brooks and colleagues found that peers with more work autonomy had higher levels of work engagement. Fukui and colleagues also found that job resources (e.g., organizational support, autonomy, role clarity) and job stressors (e.g., emotional exhaustion, high caseloads, serving high-risk consumers) have an impact on quality of care.
What are some practical implications of the articles featured in the issue?
Most of the papers in this special issue suggest that, although challenges and obstacles may be encountered in promoting wellness, there are likely steps to take at various levels of the organization to support resilience. Although research remains limited, organizations can capitalize on the findings from studies in this special section to develop a better understanding of the drivers of well-being and related outcomes, as well as develop ideas for how to improve the well-being of the psychiatric rehabilitation workforce.
Note: This article is in the Health Psychology topic area. View more articles in the Health Psychology topic area.