Burnout in Social Work Field Education: Mitigating the Risk

This book informs social work students about the context and potential for burnout in their field experience, their first work with clients, and equips them to recognize, prevent, and address it. With its emphasis on role ambiguity and self-care based on current research, the volume uniquely fills the gap in available texts and prepares them for successful professional practice with personal mental health.

Job burnout and self-care have received attention in research and education in social work and other caring professions, but social work students must successfully complete managed learning assignments in the field before they can become social workers, and those experiences can put the student at risk for burnout. Until very recently, however, student burnout has been a ’silent’ issue in the profession and the literature.

With this compact book, readers learn the risks of burnout in field assignments for students and new professionals, the organizational andpersonal factors that contribute to it, appropriate self-care strategies to reduce its incidence, and effective coping strategies to limit its effect. Stakeholders gain understanding about burnout incidence, prevention, and self-care that prepares them to take appropriate preventive and prescriptive action.

Burnout in Social Work Field Education: Mitigating the Risk is a timely and essential resource for social work instructors, students, field interns, instructors, and supervisors. It can serve as a supplementary text to aid students in understanding what factors will increase their risk of burnout and help them identify which coping strategies are most likely to be effective, based on research. It is a highly desirable complementary text for adoption in social work courses and in-service education in early social work practice. The book also should interest administrators in social service agencies and presenters of in-service education opportunities for social workers and social work educators.

Mary Powell, PhD, LCSW-R, NCPsyA is a licensed clinical social worker, nationally certified psychoanalyst, and intensively trained Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) therapist. She has a full-time private psychotherapy practice. She is an adjunct professor at Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service. Dr. Powell has taught various courses in graduate social work programs since 2006. She has provided supervision and training on various topics in clinical social work to both practicing social workers and social work students for many years. She has presented her work at several local and national professional conferences and workshops. Before entering private practice and doctoral education, she worked at outpatient mental health settings as a clinical social worker. She is the author of Blue and Gold: A Bullying Memoir. Dr. Powell has held a strong interest in burnout among social workers and students and subsequently wrote her dissertation on the topic, entitled ＂Burnout, Role Ambiguity, and Coping Among Master of Social Work (MSW) Field Interns,＂ which won the Reverend Dr. Nicholas Langenfeld Award for the Most Outstanding PhD Dissertation from Fordham University. She was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation for Outstanding Contribution to Social Work Education by Adelphi University School of Social Work Field Education Department. She also received a Certificate of Achievement for Clinical Excellence from the New York State Clinical Social Work Society Metropolitan Chapter.

Linda Riggs Mayfield, Ed.D. holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in education, specializing in curriculum, assessment, and teaching and learning. She developed and tested the M4Q Test-taking Strategy. She has taught and written curriculum at every level, elementary through university, in the U.S. and Chile, primarily at the college and university level. She mentored student teachers for two universities. Dr. Mayfield has designed, conducted, and published educational research and presented her findings at local, regional, and national conferences. Since 2011, she has served as editor, co-author, and research, writing, and curriculum consultant for more than 30 master’s and doctoral scholars, authors, and educators in the U.S., Chile, India, Singapore, and Australia. She also holds a degree in history and collaborated on a U.S. history textbook. She has served on the board of the Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County in Illinois, contributes to a newspaper history column, and hosts a history website. She is the literacy outreach specialist for a community college in the Midwestern U.S. where she recruits and trains volunteer literacy tutors.