South African speech-language therapists’ and audiologists’ professional quality of life

South African Journal of Communication Disorders

 
 
Field Value
 
Title South African speech-language therapists’ and audiologists’ professional quality of life
 
Creator de Andrade, Victor M. da Silva, Cherilyn Israel, Nickey
 
Subject speech-language pathology; audiology; psychology professional quality of life; speech-language therapists; audiologists; compassion satisfaction; burnout; secondary traumatic stress; South Africa; compassion fatigue
Description Background: Limited research is available regarding the professional quality of life experiences of South African speech-language therapists and audiologists, despite the implications this has for wellbeing, quality of patient care, productivity and attrition from the professions.Objectives: This study explored levels of compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress, the relationships between these, differences on the basis of registration and years of experience and participants’ perceptions of their professional quality of life.Method: A sample of 92 South African speech-language therapists and audiologists completed an online survey that included the Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) scale. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics, analysis of variation (ANOVA), correlations and thematic analysis.Results: The findings indicated that participants experienced slightly higher levels of secondary traumatic stress and burnout and slightly lower levels of compassion satisfaction than international samples. There were significant inter-relationships between the three elements of professional quality of life, and no significant differences for these on the basis of registration or years of experience. Participants identified a range of factors that contributed to their experiences of compassion satisfaction and fatigue, as well as suggestions for improvement.Conclusion: Professional quality of life plays an important role in South African speech-language therapists and audiologists’ professionalism, job performance and satisfaction and retention.Contribution: The data collected provide valuable insights into the professional quality of life experiences of South African speech-language therapists and audiologists, as well as those working in similar contexts. It also offers suggestions that may contribute to future research and interventions.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2024-08-23
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Survey
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/sajcd.v71i1.1042
 
Source South African Journal of Communication Disorders; Vol 71, No 1 (2024); 9 pages 2225-4765 0379-8046
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://sajcd.org.za/index.php/sajcd/article/view/1042/2283 https://sajcd.org.za/index.php/sajcd/article/view/1042/2284 https://sajcd.org.za/index.php/sajcd/article/view/1042/2285 https://sajcd.org.za/index.php/sajcd/article/view/1042/2286
 
Coverage South Africa Current practice Varied
Rights Copyright (c) 2024 Victor M. de Andrade, Cherilyn da Silva, Nicky Israel https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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