OCCUPATIONAL BURNOUT AMONG SPEECH THERAPISTS: THE ROLE OF EMOTIONAL LABOR AND COMPASSION FATIGUE

Abstract

Speech-language therapy requires sustained interpersonal engagement, emotional regulation, empathy, and therapeutic support and thus could be susceptible to occupational psychological strain. Emotional labor, compassion fatigue and burnout are well researched among healthcare workers however there is limited research of speech therapists in Pakistan. The purpose of this study was to analyse the relationship between emotional labour and burnout and to see if emotional labour and compassion fatigue were associated with burnout in speech therapists. The quantitative, cross sectional, correlational design was adopted with 60 speech-language therapists, who were recruited through convenience sampling. Emotional labor, compassion fatigue and burnout were measured with the Emotional Labor Scale, 30-item scale of Professional Quality of Life and the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory, respectively. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation and regression analysis were employed in SPSS to analyze the data. Emotional labor was positively correlated with burnout, r = .380, p = .003, and accounted for 14.5% of the variance in burnout. Emotional labor and compassion fatigue explained 35.4% of the variance in burnout (R² = .354, p < .001). Findings identify emotional labor as an important occupational factor associated with burnout among speech therapists.