Priya V's Senior Project Blog
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Project Title: COVID-19 Anxiety, Emotional Labor, and Burnout in Community Health Providers BASIS Advisor: Amy Anderson Internship Location: Honor Health-Deer Valley Medical Center - *Research Sponsor Onsite Mentor: Lisa Webster, Executive Director of Development and Research Sponsor, Kylene Price, Volunteer Services Supervisor |
Project Abstract
This project aims to connect the well-established relationship between burnout and emotional labor to the concept of COVID-19 anxiety. Burnout refers to feelings of emotional, physical, or psychological exhaustion caused by prolonged work-related stress. Emotional labor refers to the way that people may fake or mask their emotions in order to portray the reactions that are expected of someone in their position. Finally, COVID-19 anxiety refers to feelings of stress or anxiety around the topic of COVID-19 as it exists in the present day (It is important to note that this does not refer to feelings of stress that someone may have felt during times or quarantine or restriction). As COVID-19 has been declassified as a health emergency and the psychological effects of the pandemic begin to die down, healthcare workers are caught in between seeing COVID patients regularly and wanting to return back to normal life. Therefore, it is important to study the psychological burden on healthcare workers as society moves forward beyond the pandemic, as this information will be vital to supporting healthcare workers in the future after such a long period of stress and unsafe patient ratios. Community health workers were hit particularly hard by this, as they are already under extra stress by working daily with struggling and vulnerable populations. The pandemic increased the number of patients coming to community health centers, and as restrictions are lifted, community health programs continue to work to return to normal. This study will survey community health workers at MHC Healthcare, the longest-serving community health organization in Arizona. The answers to the survey will be used to determine the correlations between emotional labor, burnout, and COVID-19 anxiety, along with the 8 subscales that fall within emotional labor and burnout. Additionally, interviews will be used to determine more causal connections between these concepts, and provide a more qualitative look at this concept.
Wrapping Up
Hello again, for the last time! This is going to be my final blog post, and reflecting on the past few months, it’s been quite the wild ride. This project has taught me so much, from statistical analysis, to presenting my data, to drawing conclusions from numbers in a spreadsheet. I hope that, going forward... Read More
Interesting Findings
Hello everyone! For my second-to-last blog post, I’d love to talk about some of the most interesting and significant findings thus far in my data analysis. Overall, it seems that COVID-19 and its spread have become less of a major source of concern and anxiety for the providers at MHC Healthcare. This is an enormous... Read More
Graphs
Hello again! This week, I’ve been focusing on my data analysis and presentation. In terms of data analysis, I’ve been focusing on ways to visualize my data. It’s very important that an audience is able to understand your results, so showing them a graph is a great way to help them visualize what exactly you’ve... Read More
Privacy Protections
Hello everyone! Today I thought I’d talk a bit about a very important facet of research with human subjects: protecting their privacy. My interview- and survey-based method exclusively gathers data from human participants, so this was at the forefront of my mind while I was designing this study. Protecting study participants is very important to... Read More
Data Analysis pt. 2
Hello again! Unfortunately I don’t have much in the way of updates this week. I’ve continued meeting with providers from MHC Healthcare and learning about their experiences with COVID-19 working in community health, and the general agreement seems to be overall positivity and appreciation for the resources available at MHC Healthcare for providers. However, one... Read More
Data Analysis
Hello everyone! This week has definitely been a frustrating one in terms of my senior project, as I am certainly no expert when it comes to statistics. I’ve mainly been focusing on data analysis for my survey data, which has involved a lot of numbers! I’m learning a lot about different types of correlations and... Read More
Interviews
Hello again! In the past week, I’ve really been focusing on completing interviews with the MHC Healthcare providers. For the most part, they have been amazing to work with, providing very thoughtful and informative answers about their experiences. Since my last post, I’ve completed 4 more interviews, and each provider has really given me a... Read More
Data-Gathering
Hello everyone! This week’s post will be a general update post about my progress on this project so far. As I discussed in my Introductory Post, my study methods are based on surveys and interviews of the providers at MHC Healthcare. As of Sunday February 25th, my survey has officially closed, and I’ve transferred all... Read More
My Experiences at DVMC
Hello again! As I’ve mentioned previously, my internship location is at HonorHealth’s Deer Valley Medical Center (DVMC), a nonprofit hospital. DVMC is a medical pillar for the surrounding area, as we handle not only inpatient care for patients that are sick enough to be admitted to the hospital, but also procedures for outpatients, or healthy... Read More
Surveys and Scales
Hello everyone! Today I’ll be discussing the methodology of my study: specifically, the tools that I’ll be using in my survey. I’m using a combination of three different surveys in order to measure emotional labor, burnout, and COVID-19 anxiety. This paper uses an English translation of the Dutch Emotional Labor Scale (Briët et al., 2005),... Read More
Terms and Definitions
Hello again! You may have come across a couple of unfamiliar terms in my previous post, so I’d love to share a little more information about the concepts I’m studying. COVID-19 anxiety refers to feelings of stress and anxiety caused by COVID-19 (Dantas Silva et al., 2022). It is important to note that this does... Read More
COVID-19 Anxiety, Burnout, and Emotional Labor in Community Health Providers
Hello everyone! I’m Priya Verma, and my project is “COVID-19 Anxiety, Burnout, and Emotional Labor in Community Health Providers.” My research question for this project is: What is the relationship between COVID-19 anxiety, emotional labor, and burnout in community health providers working at MHC Healthcare? As the pandemic has been declassified as a public health... Read More