Professional quality of life normative benchmarks

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Occupational Health
• Trauma Care

Background:

• Professional caregivers of trauma survivors face unique challenges impacting their well-being.
• Compassion satisfaction (CS), burnout (BO), and compassion fatigue (CF) are key indicators of professional quality of life.
• Existing normative data for the Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) Scale may be misleading.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide updated normative data for CS, BO, and CF among professional caregivers of trauma survivors.
• To offer a more accurate interpretation of ProQOL Scale scores.
• To understand the typical balance of positive and negative outcomes in this population.

Main Methods:

• A comprehensive literature review of 30 studies.
• Inclusion of data from 5,612 professional caregivers.
• Analysis and presentation of normative values for CS, BO, and CF.

Main Results:

• The mean (SD) scores were: CS = 37.7 (6.5), CF = 16.7 (5.7), and BO = 22.8 (5.4).
• Findings indicate that CS scores are generally higher than BO scores.
• BO scores tend to be slightly higher than CF scores within samples.

Conclusions:

• The reviewed normative values are consistent across studies.
• Caregivers typically report higher compassion satisfaction than burnout.
• Burnout is generally reported at slightly higher levels than compassion fatigue.