Development and Validation of the Barriers to Professional Self-Care Scale (BPS-CS)

Area of Science:

• Social Work
• Occupational Health Psychology
• Psychometrics

Background:

• Social service professionals face significant work stress and vicarious trauma.
• Self-care is vital for mitigating negative work consequences but is often framed as solely a personal responsibility.
• An individualistic view of self-care overlooks systemic barriers, potentially increasing work stress costs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a new instrument measuring barriers to self-care among social workers.
• To examine the association between these barriers, self-compassion, and self-care practices.

Main Methods:

• A sample of 325 social workers in Spain participated.
• Confirmatory factor analysis was used to validate the Barriers to Professional Self-Care Scale.
• The scale demonstrated a reliable four-factor structure: "lack of information," "self-care is unprofessional," "self-care is not a priority," and "noninvolvement of organizations."

Main Results:

• Perceiving self-care as unprofessional correlated with lower engagement in self-care practices.
• Social workers who viewed barriers as more significant reported less self-compassion.
• The developed scale showed adequate psychometric properties for assessing self-care barriers.

Conclusions:

• The Barriers to Professional Self-Care Scale effectively identifies obstacles to self-care in social work.
• Findings highlight the link between perceived barriers, self-compassion, and actual self-care behaviors.
• The scale can inform interventions to address systemic barriers and promote professional well-being.