Child Abuse Taking Its Toll on the Emotional Well-Being of Pediatricians

Abstract

Pediatricians caring for patients with child abuse or neglect (CABN) may experience secondary traumatic stress (STS) from traumatized patients, or burnout (BO) from workplace stress. This may be buffered by compassion satisfaction (CS), positive meaning from one’s work. For this study, STS, BO, and CS specific to a pediatrician’s care of CABN were assessed for residents, hospitalists, intensivists, and outpatient physicians. Using the Professional Quality of Life Scale modified for CABN experiences, participants (n = 62) had a mean STS score at the 84th percentile, a mean BO score at the 66th percentile, and a mean CS score at the 17th percentile. Reporting one CABN patient as most emotionally impactful predicted STS, caring for all types of CABN predicted BO, and perceived knowledge no longer predicted CS when adjusting for the experience of mandated reporting or CABN fatality. These results highlight the need to support pediatricians involved with CABN.

Caring for victims of child maltreatment: Pediatric nurses’ moral distress and burnout

“…Similar results were noted in pediatricians caring for child abuse and neglect victims, who experienced burnout from confronting complex cases of sexual assault, sexual abuse, and neglect. 46 Research in related areas has indicated that child abuse professionals working in child advocacy centers across the United States experience high levels of burnout. 47 In this study, caring for victims of suspected sexual abuse and fatal maltreatment were the only categories showing high depersonalization scores; it may be that nurses feel less competent and ineffective while caring for these specific types of child abuse.…”

How Should Clinicians and Students Cope With Secondary Trauma When Caring for Children Traumatized by Abuse or Neglect?

“…23 Another study found that pediatricians and trainees caring for patients with suspected abuse and neglect had high average scores of secondary traumatic stress and low average compassion satisfaction scores. 24 When educating trainees and students, mentors must acknowledge this challenging aspect of the work and offer strategies to cope with and mitigate secondary trauma.…”

Burnout: Definition, Prevalence, Risk Factors, Prevention, and Interventions Literature Reviews

“…Other instruments used to measure burnout included the ProQOL V Scale (Doolittle, 2020;Glover-Stief, Jannen, and Cohn, 2020;O'Hara et al, 2020), the Mini Z (Gardner et al, 2019;Tran et al, 2019;Yank et al, 2019), the burnout subscale from the CFST (Gribben, MacLean, et al, 2019), the Staff Burnout Scale for Health Professionals (Hillhouse, Adler, and Walters, 2000), the 16-item OLBI (Janko and Smeds, 2019), and a four-item measure from the Physician Worklife Study (Kroth et al, 2019). One study used the 19-item CBI (Thrush et al, 2019), and one study used the 30-item Jones Staff Burnout Scale for Health Professionals (Yasko, 1983).…”

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