Compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue among medical social workers in Korea: the role of empathy.

Medical social workers are affected by their clients' suffering, which has an impact on social workers' professional quality of life. This study examined the role of empathy in relation to professional quality of life among medical social workers in South Korea. Using the Professional Quality of Life Scale and Interpersonal Reactivity Index, we found that empathic concern and personal distress were significant components of empathy and were correlated with professional quality of life. Empathic concern was positively associated with compassion satisfaction and negatively associated with burnout. Personal distress was correlated with all components of quality of life: compassion satisfaction, secondary traumatic stress, and burnout. Women had significantly higher levels of burnout than men; religious affiliation was associated with higher levels of compassion satisfaction; and longer years of employment was associated with higher levels of secondary traumatic stress. Medical social workers should be educated on and trained in how empathy can help them address compassion fatigue and promote compassion satisfaction.

Role changes of hospital social workers in South Korea.

The roles of social workers in hospitals have changed in accordance with the environmental changes in the healthcare system. Since 1958, hospital social workers have performed important roles in providing care services in South Korea. Providing psychosocial services was considered to be the most important for more than 30 years from the 1970s to the 1990s. The healthcare system has since undergone major environmental changes, yet there has been little study on the role of hospital social workers in South Korea. In order to address this research gap, this study aims to explore how the roles of hospital social workers have changed since the 2000s. We recruited 198 hospital social workers who were active members of the Korean Association of Medical Social Workers as study participants. The average age of participants was 35.36 years old (SD = 8.27), and they had an average of 8.24 years in hospital social work experience (SD = 6.35). The results indicated that the roles of financial support and community resource linkage, which were regarded to be relatively less important until the 1990s, were recognized as the most important. Given the role changes of hospital social workers in South Korea, implications are discussed.