A survey of psychological practitioner workplace well-being

Summers, Elisabeth M.A., Morris, Reg C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8250-9315, Bhutani, Gita E., Rao, Amra S. and Clarke, Jeremy C. 2021. A survey of psychological practitioner workplace well-being. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy 28 (2) , pp. 438-451. 10.1002/cpp.2509

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Abstract

The well-being of the psychological workforce is an area of concern. However, it has been sparsely studied in a holistic manner encompassing workplace well-being as well as burnout. This study reports a survey of 1,678 psychological practitioners accessed through professional networks. The short Warwick Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (SWEMWBS) and the Psychological Practitioner Workplace Well-being Measure (PPWWM) were administered with a demographic questionnaire. The mean for the SWEMWBS was below that of a national population survey. The intercorrelation of these tests was .61. Subgroup analyses showed significant differences: assistant psychologists, counsellors and psychological well-being practitioners demonstrated better than average workplace well-being. But for general well-being (SWEMWBS), trainee clinical psychologists and assistant psychologists showed lower than average well-being, whereas psychological well-being practitioners were higher than average. Other factors associated with well-being were contract type—both measures (higher workplace well-being in those with temporary contracts and the self-employed); employment sector—for PPWWM only (private organisation/independent workers and third sector/charitable organisation workers scored above the PPWWM mean); ethnicity—for both measures (Asian groups except Chinese had higher well-being than average for the PPWWM and SWEMWBS) and disability was strongly associated with lower well-being on both measures. Harassment, feeling depressed or a failure and wanting to leave the National Health Service (NHS) were associated with lower well-being. Greater age, pay and years of service were negatively correlated with well-being. A five-factor structure was obtained with this sample. The results confirmed psychological practitioners as an at-risk group and identified a number of factors associated with workplace well-being.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Psychology
Publisher:	John Wiley and Sons
ISSN:	1063-3995
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	11 August 2021
Date of Acceptance:	22 August 2020
Last Modified:	06 Nov 2023 13:16
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/143130

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