ABSTRACT

Many factors within the social work profession can lead to empathic distress, compassion fatigue, and burnout. These concerns also apply to college students preparing for a career in social work. Compassion has been noted to be of benefit in connecting workers to clients, families, and communities. Likewise, self-compassion involves the skills of non-judgment, empathy, care for oneself, and social action, and has been studied as a preventative for burnout and distress among social workers. Given these benefits for established social workers, defining and practicing self-compassion is critical to the well-being of social work students and is worth examining for addition to social work curricula. In this exploratory qualitative research, using systematic content analysis, students were asked to define self-compassion and share how they engaged in self-care. Participants’ definition of self-compassion using empathy and non-judgment toward oneself reflected the concept of Mindfulness and Self Kindness, components of Neff’s Self-Compassion Scale. However, the element Common Humanity was missing in the students’ definition. Implications for social work education and curriculum development are discussed.

摘要

社会工作专业中的许多因素会导致共情困扰、同情疲劳和倦怠。这些担忧也适用于准备从事社会工作的大学生。人们注意到，同情心有助于将员工与客户、家庭和社区联系起来。同样，自我同情涉及不评判、同理心、照顾自己和社会行动的技能，并且已被研究作为社会工作者的倦怠和痛苦的预防措施。鉴于社会工作者的这些好处，定义和实践自我同情对社会工作学生的福祉至关重要，值得研究以增加社会工作课程。在这项探索性定性研究中，使用系统的内容分析，学生们被要求定义自我同情并分享他们如何进行自我保健。参与者使用同理心和对自己的非评判来定义自我慈悲，反映了正念和自善的概念，这是内夫自我慈悲量表的组成部分。然而，学生们的定义中缺少共同人性这个元素。讨论了对社会工作教育和课程开发的影响。