Development and Validation of the Barriers to Professional Self-Care Scale (BPS-CS)

Professionals who provide essential social services often face high levels of stress and the suffering of others. Self-care is key to preventing the negative consequences of these working conditions, but it is mostly defined as a personal responsibility. This individualist interpretation may contribute to exacerbating the costs of work stress by ignoring the existence of barriers that do not depend on the professionals. This study aims to develop and validate a new instrument to assess barriers to self-care among social workers, as well as their association with self-compassion and self-care practices. The sample comprised 325 social workers from Spain. Participants were predominantly female (87.4 percent) and worked in public social services (52 percent). Confirmatory factor analysis revealed a four-factor structure (“lack of information,” “self-care is unprofessional,” “self-care is not a priority,” and “noninvolvement of organizations”) consisting of 17 items with adequate psychometric properties. Considering self-care to be unprofessional was associated with less involvement in self-care practices. The social workers who considered the barriers to be more limiting were also those who reported more uncompassionate responses. The Barriers to Professional Self-Care Scale can be used to identify the barriers to professionals’ self-care, examining what maintains them and advancing in its prevention.