Stress of conscience and burnout in healthcare : the danger of deadening one's conscience

• Main Author: Glasberg, Ann-Louise
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Omvårdnad 2007
• Subjects: conscience; troubled conscience; stress; burnout; healthcare personnel; Nursing; Omvårdnad; Northern Sweden
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-1111

The overall purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether there is an association between “stress of conscience” — that is, stress related to a troubled conscience — and burnout, and to obtain an enhanced understanding of factors related to stress of conscience and burnout in healthcare. Of the four “studies” included, one uses qualitative research methods and the others use quantitative research methods. The data are based on cross-sectional questionnaire studies (I, II, and IV) and open-ended interviews (III). We could find no existing suitable instrument for measuring troubled conscience in healthcare, and so we constructed and tested the “Stress of Conscience Questionnaire” (SCQ) (I), a nine-item instrument for assessing stressful situations and the degree to which they trouble the conscience. We included 164 participants in the pilot studies, an additional 444 in the main analysis, and 55 in the test-retest verification. Participants had various occupational backgrounds and were recruited from different parts of Sweden. Our findings suggest that the SCQ is a valid and reliable measurement for use in various healthcare contexts. Cronbach’s α for the overall scale was 0.83, ensuring internal consistency. Explorative factor analysis identified and labelled two factors: “internal demands” and “external demands and restrictions”. To investigate factors related to stress of conscience and burnout (II, IV) we used a sample of 423 healthcare personnel from various specialities and with various occupations, from a district in northern Sweden. Multiple regression analysis showed that the factors related to stress of conscience (II) were: perceiving that conscience warns us against hurting others while at the same time not being able to follow one’s conscience at work, and having to deaden one’s conscience in order to keep working in healthcare; and also moral sensitivity items belonging to the factor “sense of moral burden”. In addition, deficient social support from superiors, low levels of resilience, and ...