Effective Intervention to Reduce Psychological Stress in Human Service Professionals: A Critical Appraisal

Evidence Based Nursing Research
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Introduction:
Human service professionals work for wellbeing of the vulnerable, distressed, and
disadvantaged people. This type of work is associated with both physical and psychological
stress. Hence, these human service professionals are more prone to burnout and psychological
distress. Intervention need to be provided for such professionals in the form of resilience and
mindfulness to reduce this psychological distress. Effectiveness of the intervention in the
form of resilience and mindfulness can be assessed by conducting research. Validity of the
research can be established by critically appraising the research article. This essay will
critically compare, analyse and assess effective intervention to reduce psychological stress in
human service professionals. In this essay, quality of the research paper will critically
examine the authors, purpose of the study, study design, study methodology and results.
Discussion:
Authors participated for conducting this research study were with relevant expertise and
experience for this study. These authors were associated with organisation where all the
facilities were available for carrying out this study. Every author contributed significantly in
this research study; however, they were not having any conflict of interest.
In this research article, efforts were being made to answer the question set during clinical
scenario. Question set during clinical scenario was in alignment with the aim of the study.
Clinical question and aim of the study mentioned about relationship between the resilience,
mindfulness, psychological distress, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress among human
service professionals. There is direct relationship between the high level of burnout and
secondary traumatic stress with psychological distress with high magnitude. Resilience and
mindfulness can effectively reduce secondary traumatic stress and psychological distress.
However, little attention was given to establish relationship between psychological
interventions like resilience and mindfulness and burnout and secondary traumatic stress.
Establishing this relationship can be helpful in reducing turnover, absenteeism and
unproductive work (Liamputtong, 2016).
In this study, cross-sectional correlational design was being implemented. This study design
was appropriate for finding relationship between the mindfulness and resilience with the
burnout and psychological distress. Moreover, these variables need to be correlated to the
participant specific variables like age, gender, education and employment. In cross-sectional
correlational design data at the single point of time should be collected and in correlational
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study correlation among different variables need to be established. This study design can be
helpful in establishing association among different variables; however, it cannot establish
temporal relationship. Cross sectional study comprises of observational study in which data
need to be collected from the specific population. In this research, study was carried out on
specific population like healthcare workers. Correlation can be helpful in assessing whether
increase or decrease in one or more variable can be helpful in increasing or decreasing
another variable. In this study, improvement in the mindfulness and resilience was evaluated
for decreasing burnout and psychological distress in the healthcare professionals
(Richardson-Tench, Taylor, Kermode et al., 2015).
Random sampling was being used in this study; however, it was not clearly mentioned. In
random sampling, every participant has opportunity to get participated in the study.
Participants recruited in this study were based on the predefined criteria; hence it can also be
called as purposive sampling. Recruited participants meet the aim of the study because these
participants were recruited from human related services (Melnyk and Fineout-Overholt,
2015).
In this research, quantitative research method was implemented. It was evident from carrying
out survey through questionnaires. Survey research is usually carried out to collect
information related to population of interest. In this research study, information about the
population of interest which is human service related professionals need to be collected.
Surveys can be either questionnaires or sampling. Participation could have been made
mandatory for the participants; hence, it could have met the exact criteria of random sampling
and helped in reducing biasness. These participants were allowed for self-reporting. This self-
reporting also leads to biasness (Hoffmann, Bennett, and Del Mar, 2017; Schneider,
Whitehead, LoBiondo-Wood et al., 2016). In this research study, questionnaires were more
appropriate because in this study predefined set of questions were used for collecting
information from the participants. These predefined set of questionnaires include General
Well-Being Schedule (GWBS), Quality of Life Scale – Version 5 (ProQOL-5), The
Resilience Factor Inventory (RFI) and The Frieburg Mindfulness Inventory (FMI). Hence,
implemented research methodology was appropriate for meeting aim of the research study.
These questionnaires were also again associated with subscales; hence, detailed information
was gathered through these questionnaires. In these surveys, closed ended questions were
used. These types of questions were more useful in such type of studies because variability
among different responders can be reduced (Punch, 2013).
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