Combating Social Work Burnout with Agency Trainings

Supporting providers to alleviate the high level of burnout is proven to ameliorate their ability to provide efficient care. With the understanding of the importance of supporting providers in this field, the deep dive into utilizing trainings that helps combat burnouts is equally important. This research project was aimed to investigate the relevance of the implemented trainings by reviewing finalized progress notes of county social workers who have taken the Sleep Coach training. This was done by analyzing notes using search keys, then giving a score to each time the word ‘sleep’ was mentioned, based on the context it was used in. The expected outcome of this project was to discover high usage of the terms derived from the training, however upon reviewing a handful of social worker IIIs and psychiatric social workers’ notes through the duration of one year post Sleep Coach training, it was found that the usage from each providers’ notes were extremely low, indicating that their one year progress notes were composed of less than 30% of linguistic terminology. After finding this training was not being translated when working directly with clients, rationales for this reason can now be investigated by the MCBH training department to enhance productivity of the trainings they offer to their providers. Methods of this exploration’s analysis can be comprised of questioning providers to receive feedback, analyzing additional providers’ notes on the same training topics, examine notes from the trainings further than one year’s duration, and researching updated methods of supporting clients.