Empathy, Professional Quality of Life and Stress Coping Strategies Among Dental Hygienists-A Cross-Sectional Study.

INTRODUCTION

Dental hygienists work in a stressful environment and often experience substantial personal distress, which can adversely affect their empathy as well as their professional quality of life. The present study attempted to evaluate stress coping strategies and their effect on empathy, burnout, compassion satisfaction and secondary traumatic stress among dental hygienists.

METHODS

A cross-sectional online survey was conducted using the following self-report questionnaires (i) Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy for Health Professionals (JSPE-HP); (ii) professional quality of life questionnaire (ProQoL) to measure burnout, compassion satisfaction and secondary traumatic stress; and (iii) Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations-Situation Specific Coping inventory (CISS-SSC) to measure task-focused coping, emotion-focused coping and avoidance focused coping strategies.

RESULTS

127 hygienists responded. Subjects' empathy could be best predicted by task-oriented coping style and burnout (stepwise linear regression, R2 = 0.19, p < 0.01.). Subjects' burnout could be best predicted by emotion-focused coping style, empathy and age (R2 = 0.346, p < 0.001.), their level of secondary traumatic stress could be best predicted by emotional-focused coping (R2 = 0.283, p < 0.001) and level of compassion satisfaction could be best predicted by task-focused coping style, emotion-focused coping style and professional experience (R2 = 0.315, p < 0.01).

CONCLUSION

Findings suggest that in the dental hygiene profession, coping styles play a significant role in empathy and the different aspects of subjects' professional quality of life. While task-coping style positively affects subjects' empathy, emotion-focused coping causes dental hygienists to be more vulnerable to secondary traumatic stress and burnout.