Roads to Self-Care: Teaching vs. Self-Guided

Self-care is suggested as a solution to the burnout of counselors. However, self-care has not been actively taught in the curriculum. This study examined the impact of self-care intervention on professional quality of life, consisting of compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress, among students-in-training in a counselor education master’s program. Using a quasi-experimental, 2 × 2 factorial design, the research compared students who received a five-week intervention with those who did not. We also considered whether they were engaged in self-guided self-care activities in the research model. The data were collected over two academic years and analyzed using multivariate analysis of covariance to compare the changes in the levels of professional quality of life with 77 participants. Findings indicated that while the intervention did not improve outcomes, students who practiced self-care independently experienced greater compassion satisfaction and reduced burnout over time.