Professional Quality of Life Scale for Health Workers (ProQOL Health)

Healthcare workers working in difficult humanitarian contexts have direct contact with the lives of their patients and beneficiaries. They frequently work long hours in under-resourced and high-pressure settings and are confronted by suffering and grief daily while working with their beneficiaries. In addition, these beneficiaries’ experiences, especially in the refugee context, add another dimension of possible stress. Healthcare workers may find that their wellbeing is impacted by the stressors and exposure to trauma arising in the context of their work, resulting in increased vulnerability to burnout, compassion fatigue and secondary traumatic stress.

Purpose and Use

The Professional Quality of Life Scale for Health Workers (ProQOL Health) is a 30-item self-report measure designed to assess the positive and negative effects of working with individuals who have experienced trauma and suffering. It is intended for health workers and other helping professionals. The ProQOL Health helps individuals and organizations identify and address the emotional impact of caregiving work, promoting well-being and preventing negative outcomes.

Scores on a measure such as the ProQOL-HEALTH should be treated as one piece of information about your quality of life. It is useful to compare the results of the ProQOL-HEALTH with you own experience of your personal and working life, as well as observations that others close to you have made about your health and happiness. Many health workers find it useful to complete the ProQOL-Health on a regular basis and compare current and past scores. In other words, you can use your past scores as a comparison for how you are doing today. Others find it useful to discuss their scores with trusted colleagues, friends and supervisors. The ProQOL-Health is still under development. We are still collecting data so that you can compare your scores to those of other health workers doing similar work. The indicators or low, medium and high levels should be used only as a rough guide.

The scale evaluates five key domains of professional quality of life:

• Compassion Satisfaction (CS): This refers to the pleasure and satisfaction a helper derives from their work, including feeling effective and that their work makes a difference. High scores suggest a greater sense of fulfillment from helping others.
• Perceived Support (PS): Perceived support is your sense of having access to effective assistance when you need it.
• Burnout (BO): This component is associated with feelings of exhaustion, frustration, anger, and depression. It is characterized by feelings of hopelessness and difficulty in dealing with work or performing tasks effectively. High scores indicate a significant risk of burnout.
• Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS): This relates to the stress resulting from helping or wanting to help a traumatized or suffering person. It involves work-related, secondary exposure to extremely or traumatically stressful events, and its symptoms can mimic those of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). High scores indicate significant secondary traumatic stress.
• Moral Distress (MD): Health workers are sometimes faced with difficult situations and choices. At times we are forced by circumstance, or instructed, to act in ways that conflict with our personal values, beliefs and morality.

Scoring and Interpretation

The scale consists of 30 questions rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1=Never, 5=Very Often) based on experiences in the last 30 days. Each subscale is composed of 10 items. The scores for each subscale are calculated by summing the responses for the corresponding items. For a copy of the questions and scoring methodology, go to ProQOL Health - Ver 1_branded.pdf which can also be found at ProQOL Health | ProQOL.

• Compassion Satisfaction Items: 1, 6, 21, 24, 27, 30
• Perceived Support items: 5, 11, 13, 18, 23, 25
• Burnout items: 8, 15, 19, 20, 22, 29
• Secondary Traumatic Stress Items: 3, 7, 10, 12, 16, 26
• Moral Distress items: 2, 4, 9, 14, 17, 28

After summing the items for each scale, the raw score is interpreted as follows:

• A high score in Compassion Satisfaction and Perceived Support is desirable. 
• High scores in Burnout and Secondary Traumatic Stress indicate potential areas of concern that may require intervention or support.

Source

This tool is adapted from the Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL), developed by Dr. B. Hudnall Stamm. For more information, visit www.proqol.org.

As a health worker working in difficult humanitarian or pandemic situations, you have direct contact with the lives of your patients and beneficiaries. As you may have found, your compassion for those you help can affect you in positive and negative ways. 

• Below are some statements about your experiences as a health worker, both positive and negative. 
• Consider each statement about your current work situation. 
• Select the choice that most accurately reflects how frequently you have experienced these things in the last 30 days.

The ProQOL-Health is still under development. We are still collecting data so that you can compare your scores to those of other health workers doing similar work. 

• The result indicators of low, medium and high should be used only as a rough guide. 
• Many health workers find it useful to complete the ProQOL-Health on a regular basis and compare current and past scores. In other words, you can use your past scores as a comparison for how you are doing today. 
• Others find it useful to discuss their scores with trusted colleagues, friends, supervisor, or mental health provider.