Burnout After Patient Death: Challenges for Direct Care Workers

Area of Science:

• Gerontology
• Occupational Health
• Psychology

Background:

• Direct care workers in long-term care settings form close bonds with patients.
• Patient death can lead to significant grief for these workers.
• The impact of this grief on employment outcomes, particularly burnout, is understudied.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify staff, institutional, patient, and grief factors predicting burnout dimensions in direct care workers after patient death.
• To determine the specific importance of these factors.
• To establish grief as an independent predictor of burnout.

Main Methods:

• 140 certified nursing assistants and 80 homecare workers who experienced recent patient death participated.
• Data collected via semistructured interviews, standardized assessments, and structured questions.
• Assessed staff, patient, institutional characteristics, grief symptoms/avoidance, and burnout dimensions (depersonalization, emotional exhaustion, personal accomplishment).

Main Results:

• Grief factors uniquely predicted depersonalization, beyond other assessed factors.
• Supervisor support and caregiving benefits were linked to higher burnout.
• Coworker support correlated with increased depersonalization and emotional exhaustion.

Conclusions:

• Grief over patient death is an overlooked contributor to direct care worker burnout.
• High supervisor support and caregiving benefits may mitigate burnout.
• High coworker support might reflect existing burnout among staff.