Social worker stress and an online meditation programme

Abstract

Summary This article reports a study that investigates the impact of a three-month online meditation programme for geriatric social workers in South Asian cities for mitigating stress, improving professional quality of life, and building work competencies. Findings Results indicated that the online meditation sessions were effective (Cohen’s d range = 2.21–4.17, p =  .  001) in lowering perceived stress of geriatric social workers, mitigating burnout and vicarious traumatization and promoting higher levels of compassion satisfaction and geriatric social work competencies as compared to online music sessions. Meditation was more effective for women workers, Hindus and Buddhists, who undertook therapeutic interventions, and whose clientele were older adults with physical ailments, in home-care with cognitive impairments and hospice-living elderly. This was in comparison to men, Christian workers, whose work profile comprised resource mobilization and whose clientele were healthy community-dwelling older adults. Regular attendance of the online meditation sessions and self-practice were significant mediators of intervention impact. Applications The findings contribute to intervention research on mitigating stress at work and more specifically the stress of professional geriatric care-work. In addition to mitigating burnout and reducing emotional exhaustion, this person-directed online meditation programme also led to compassion satisfaction and bolstered competencies for geriatric practice.