Importance of self-care and professional quality of life
Providing treatment to individuals suffering from mental health issues is a rewarding but challenging job. Psychologists have been shown to have high burnout rates, low self-care and numerous challenges to professional wellbeing (Hallam et al., 2020; Sprang et al., 2007). It’s likely these burdens on psychologists have only increased due to the immediate and long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The good news is that psychologists are, on the whole, satisfied with their careers (Rupert et al., 2012), with data showing several factors that predict career satisfaction:
- Control and sense of autonomy around treatment decisions
- Work-life balance
- Administrative ease (e.g., not having to worry about paperwork or client payments)
- Having opportunities to discuss work frustrations with family members or a confidant
- Career-sustaining behaviour of reflecting on satisfying work outcomes.
With burnout and compassion fatigue being key workplace hazards for psychologists, it is worth considering how we can monitor our own professional wellbeing and respond to the inevitable workplace challenges.
Self-monitoring professional quality of life
One way to monitor the quality of our relationship with work is to use a psychometric instrument, the sort that many psychologists routinely use with clients but rarely considering using for themselves. One measure designed for psychologists is the Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) Scale. The ProQOL is a 30-item self-report questionnaire designed to measure three aspects of professional wellbeing (bit.ly/3BiYn75):
- Compassion Satisfaction (pleasure you derive from being able to do your client-related work well)
- Burnout (exhaustion, frustration, anger and depression related to work)
- Secondary Traumatic Stress (feeling fear in relation to work-related primary or secondary trauma).
The scale is particularly useful for professionals to self-monitor their satisfaction and as a prompt for self-care. In addition, supervisors seeking to facilitate supervisees’ wellbeing can use the ProQOL to track professional quality of life over time to help inform workload, leave and support decisions.
Early warning signs
Like most outcome measures, the importance is not only monitoring but to act based on the results. In the case study on the following page, we see how to use the ProQOL to improve individual aspects of self-care.
Self-care plans
The benefits of utilising self-care when professionals identify difficulties in Compassion Satisfaction, Burnout or Secondary Traumatic Stress are significant.
Self-care promotes a higher quality of care for clients, and enhances capacity for empathy and relational attunement as well as modelling healthy behaviour. These benefits generalise past the workplace to also reduce the distraction of work when at home and increase connection to family, which all reinforce higher quality performance when back at work. As with many behaviour changes, it is often our thoughts and emotions that act as barriers to implementing self-care practices. For this reason, it is recommended that you write up a self-care plan to be actioned when identifying difficulties as measured by the ProQOL.
The self-care plan identifies individual activities, processes and strategies that have shown to benefit a professional’s wellbeing from past experience.
Areas of self-care
Workplace
Self-care in the workplace involves doing things that help you to work consistently at the professional level expected of you. For example:
- Engage in regular supervision or consulting with a more experienced colleague.
- Set up a peer-support group.
- Read professional journals.
- Attend professional development programs.
- Reflect on the positive outcomes you’ve had with previous clients.
- Remind yourself that most clients you’ve had contact with have probably received substantial benefit from treatment (Grissom, 1996).
- For private practitioners, make day-to-day work choices that prioritise wellbeing over your bank balance. Money isn’t very effective at increasing happiness (in fact it is 32 times less effective than psychological therapy (Boyce & Wood, 2010)).
Physical
Stay fit and healthy and do activities that give you enough energy to get through your work and personal commitments.
- Take lunch breaks.
- Go for a walk during the work day.
- Use your sick leave to invest in your health and wellbeing.
Psychological
Practise regular tasks that help you to feel clear-headed and able to intellectually engage with the professional challenges found in your work and personal life.
- Engage with a non-work hobby.
- Turn off your email and work phone outside of work hours.
- Make time to engage with positive friends and family.
Emotional
Allow yourself to safely experience your full range of emotions.
- Develop friendships that are supportive.
- Go to the movies or do something else you enjoy.
- Talk to your friends specifically
about how you are coping with work and life demands.
Spiritual
Develop a sense of perspective beyond the day-to-day of life.
- Engage in reflective practices such
as meditation.
- Go to church/mosque/temple or your place of worship.
- Practise yoga or go on a bushwalk.
Relationships
Build healthy, supportive relationships, and ensure you have diversity so that you are not only connected to work people.
- Prioritise close relationships in your life (e.g., with partners, family, pets and children).
- Attend the special events of your family and friends whenever possible.
- Begin work and end on time every day.
Practice management decisions
Self-care planning is increasingly a part of how businesses run. Knowing the worth of individuals in the workplace as well as the losses associated with lower work satisfaction and workplace engagement adds up to make a compelling case for professional quality of life being a central component of decision-making in workplaces.
When providing mental health treatment in such a fast-paced role, it can be hard to consider taking time for ourselves to zoom out and reflect on the difference our work is making in the lives of clients. Indeed, reflection on satisfying work outcomes is a major contributor to professional wellbeing (Rupert et al., 2012).
We all likely entered the field of psychology due to a passion to improve others’ lives. It is important to keep this motivation going by monitoring our relationship with our careers and risks of burnout. This process allows for professionals to engage in specific plans that can improve self-care and ensure a long and fulfilling career. Investing this time is good for your clients, your family and you.
To compare your levels of professional quality of life using the ProQOL against norms for other Australian psychologists, visit novopsych.com.au.
Contact the first author: [email protected]