Case management is being used in various fields such as social welfare, rehabilitation, mental health and nursing practices providing services through the involvement of case managers to clients with chronic and complex problem. But the case managemen...
Case management is being used in various fields such as social welfare, rehabilitation, mental health and nursing practices providing services through the involvement of case managers to clients with chronic and complex problem. But the case management is being variously progressed in the institutions without being clearly established the concepts or the instructions, etc. of the case management because it has rapidly spread for a short period time in my country. For this reason, case management has been progressed depending on individual efforts and capabilities of the case manager. An individual case management caused burnout to the case manager, and the case management requires attention and support of the organization because it can be done not alone but based on the organization. The case manager is the important factor determining quality of the case management service. Therefore, the perception about organizational environment is important that the case manager based on the organization has. Nevertheless, the study is very limited on the organizational environment of the social welfare and the burnout of the case manager. This study is to investigate the effect of organizational environment perceived by social workers charging case management.
For this study, I conducted a survey targeting the social workers managing case in 98 community centers in Seoul by visiting, post or email. I distributed a total of 200 questionnaires and utilized 104 people responses in 32 community centers for analysis. SPSS WIN 20.0 program was used for statistical analysis, and Descriptive Analysis(the frequency analysis, the percentage, the average, the standard deviation), t-test, ANOVA and Multiple Regression Analysis was used for analysis method.
The burnout of case managers is composed of three sub-variables; Emotional exhaustion, Depersonalization for the client, Lack of personal accomplishment. Independent variable, organizational environment that may affect burnout is composed of five sub-variables; Institutional support for case management, Communication for case management in organization, Network support for providing case management service, Supervision for case manager, Clarity of case management guidelines.
The summary of the results follows:
First, awareness about organizational environment is recognized ‘normal’ level that social workers managing case have. According to the sub-variables, the degree of institutional support for case management is the most negative 2.74 points. Network support for providing case management service is 2.70 points. Clarity of case management guidelines is 2.52 points. Communication within organization and supervision for case management is 2.41 points.
Second, the burnout level of case manager surveyed is 2.64 points, and emotional exhaustion was the highest with 2.95 points among the sub-variables. Lack of personal accomplishment is 2.58 points and depersonalization for the client is the lowest level of 2.39 points.
Third, the average difference between the burnout according to the individual characteristics of the case manager is not a significant impact on most exhaustion except for case management workload. Case management training was only significant impact on emotional exhaustion. Case management workload was analyzed as the variable that affects all of burnout, emotional exhaustion and depersonalization for the client. It can be understood that the personal characteristics do not affect the burnout of case managers except for case management workload.
Finally, I looked at the result that awareness about organizational environment of case managers affects the burnout, and only communication within the organization is significant for all of burnout among the organizational environment. The more negative awareness of communication is, the higher degree of burnout that case manager has is. The more negative awareness of communication within the organization and supervision are, the higher degree of emotional exhaustion, sub-variable of the burnout, is. However, the more positively network support is recognized, the higher degree of the burnout is. The more negative recognition of communication within the organization is, the higher degree of the depersonalization for the client, second sub-variable, is. In the lack of personal accomplishment, the last sub-variable, the clarity of the guidelines appeared only an influence variable. The more negative the clarity of the guidelines is, the higher degree of the lack of personal accomplishment is. In this study, the support of the organization selected sub-variable of organizational environment for case management did not affect the burnout of case manager and the sub-factors.
As the result, in order to prevent the burnout of case managers who works in community centers, first, case managers must establish a communication system that can freely express their feelings and opinions in the organization. Second, it is necessary to reduce the load of the network activity and to provide a systematic supervision in order to treat client respectfully. Third, case managers should be allowed them to feel a sense of accomplishment through clarification of instruction.
Limitations of this study are as follow:
First, the target of the investigation was restricted to Seoul, so it is difficult to generalize. Second, the research method is a questionnaire to self, so it may vary depending on circumstances and attitudes of the respondents. To overcome these limitations, it needs to be conducted a study accompanied qualitative research and a further research about various factors of organizational environment. evertheless, this study is expected to seek ways to reduce the burden and stress of case manager by examining the influence relationship between the organizational environment and the burnout of case manger.