Date
5-16-2024
Department
School of Behavioral Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy in Counselor Education and Supervision (PhD)
Chair
Stacey Lilley
Keywords
documentation, counselor wellness, professional satisfaction, trauma-informed organizational culture
Disciplines
Counseling
Recommended Citation
Gibbs, Aleta Seay, "Wellness in Licensed Professional Counselors: Counselor Perception of Documentation Expectations on Professional Satisfaction" (2024). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 5526.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/5526
Abstract
Counselors are important parts of a community, helping people heal and learn to cope with life. Communities are seeing staffing shortages, counselors leaving the field, and increasing mental health needs of residents. During the COVID-19 pandemic, regulations concerning documentation requirements and service provision rapidly changed, often several times. Counselors were permitted different ways of doing things in light of the constraints imposed by the virus. This included a reduction of how much documentation is required and might have included reductions in paperwork, policy changes, and service provision exceptions for licensed professional counselors (LPCs), like switching to telehealth for health and safety. This quantitative correlational study explored the effect of LPC perception of documentation expectations on LPC wellness and professional satisfaction. Calls for study participants occurred at two different time periods and produced two distinct samples, N = 87 and N = 96. Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation coefficient analysis were run for all study variables in each sample. Documentation expectations were found to be significantly associated with LPC feelings of burnout. LPC perceptions of working environment were assessed. Relationships between trauma-informed organizational culture and counselor resiliency and trauma-informed organizational culture and compassion satisfaction were found by correlation analysis. A negative relationship between trauma-informed organizational culture and feelings of burnout was also confirmed. Implications for counselors and counselor educators include understanding better ways to maintain wellness for counselors and counselors in training, including adding wellness components to master’s-level curriculum.
