Care staff attributions toward self-injurious behaviour exhibited by adults with intellectual disabilities.

Full Abstract

Challenging behaviours may elicit negative emotional reactions and increase stress within care staff. The Leeds Attributional Coding System (LACS) was used to elicit spontaneous causal attributions of staff toward hypothetical clients with challenging behaviours. It was hypothesized that there would be relationships (1) between staff exposure to challenging behaviours and burnout, and (2) between staff cognitions and burnout. Using a cross-sectional correlational design, 41 care staff took part in a 10 minute interview about two vignettes depicting self-injurious behaviour. Staff also completed measures of demographic information and burnout. Participants made attributions toward self-injurious behaviour that were typically internal to the client, uncontrollable, unstable and specific.There was a significant association between number of clients cared for and emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment. Staff who made fewer stable attributions had higher levels of burnout. There were no other relationships found between staff cognition and burnout. The LACS can be successfully employed in this context, and may have some benefits over other methods. Future research is required to explore the relationship between cognition and burnout.

Learn Faster Today Improve your study skills

Author information

Author/s: Snow, Elizabeth (E); Langdon, Peter E (PE); Reynolds, Shirley (S);

Affiliation: University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Journal of intellectual disabilities : JOID (J Intellect Disabil), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-Mar; vol 11 (issue 1) : pp 47-63

Dates: Created 2007/02/08; Completed 2007/06/29; Revised 2007/11/15;

PMID: 17287229, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article (including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.

MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Male
Middle Aged
Nurse-Patient Relations
Personality Inventory
Residential Facilities
Self-Injurious Behavior - nursing; psychology
Statistics as Topic
Workload - psychology

These are the highest related articles currently in the database:

See 100+ related articles.