Burnout of Direct Support Workers of Adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Several work-related, client-related, and personal stressors have shown to increase burnout levels of developmental support workers (DSWs) who support adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). These stressors have included work overload, control, client challenging behaviour, job satisfaction, and much more. However, a previous systematic review by Skirrow and Hatton (2007) reported that there remain no conclusive results about which variables trigger the development of burnout in this population and they reported that burnout levels of this population is average and comparable to other human service professions. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and the methods of Skirrow and Hatton (2007), a systematic review of the literature was completed which reports the consistencies and magnitudes of correlations and predictors of burnout in the population of DSWs supporting adults with IDDs. Classical meta-regression analyses and forest plots were also completed and analyzed to compare the difference in burnout levels in the review completed by Skirrow and Hatton (2007) compared to the sample of burnout levels in this review. The results show that there are several variables which were consistently significantly associated with burnout of this population across studies while other variables were inconsistent in their association with burnout across the studies. For burnout levels, it was found that both emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment scores have significantly worsened since Skirrow and Hatton’s (2007) review while depersonalization scores have improved. Overall, this research shows the vast array of variables which can impact the development of burnout, where client and work-related variables appear to have a more significant impact on burnout development than personal characteristics of DSWs.