The Professional Counselor | Volume 13, Issue 3 172 coworkers who can provide case consultation (i.e., negative work environment) or reduced quality time with family and friends because of limited free time (i.e., deterioration in personal life), can now be perceived as early signs of counselor burnout that require intervention. This means that they may still be in the early phases and have the potential to bounce back if they seek help and receive early intervention. Given the gravity of more severe symptoms of burnout (i.e., incompetence and devaluing clients), counselors may utilize this model to detect the early signs of counselor burnout and develop strategies, such as self-care or help-seeking plans, so they can avoid progressing to the later phases of counselor burnout. Failing to take immediate action and receive appropriate help can lead to a serious problem, resulting in not only violating ethical obligations given to all counselors but also potentially harming clients. Specifically, counselors exhibiting the symptom of devaluing clients but failing to take any action may violate the two core values of the counseling profession: “nonmaleficence” and “beneficence” (ACA, 2014). The ACA Code of Ethics (ACA, 2014) states that professional counselors should avoid causing harm to their clients and work for the good of the clients by promoting their mental health and well-being. By devaluing clients as a result of experiencing burnout, counselors would essentially devastate the therapeutic relationship with their clients (Garner, 2006), impair their own ability to promote clients’ well-being (i.e., violation of beneficence), and ultimately cause serious harm to the clients (i.e., violation of nonmaleficence). Implications for Clinical Supervisors As counselors take primary responsibility for detecting the symptoms of burnout to maintain their optimal effectiveness, supervisors should continue to support them by guaranteeing adequate supervision and continuing education that provides an opportunity to discuss burnout experiences. Supervisors may set aside time during the supervision sessions for genuine discussions to help counselors better address their burnout and encourage them to regularly adopt the sequential model of the current study to assess their experience pertaining to the five dimensions. Continuing education may focus on the early warning signs of burnout, which in the current study were negative work environment and deterioration in personal life, so that supervisees can take immediate action when detecting the signs of burnout. Encouraging counselors to monitor their sudden changes and stressors at work and in their personal life and maintain a balance between them could help them seek support from supervisors and professional counseling. Relatedly, when counselors show the cognitive and behavioral patterns of devaluing clients, which is the last element in the sequential process of counselor burnout, supervisors should take immediate actions to protect both clients and counselors (ACA, 2014; Dang & Sangganjanavanich, 2015) because it may signal more serious levels of burnout. Therefore, supervisors need to maintain an open and inviting atmosphere to not only allow conversations when supervisees feel less empathetic toward their clients or disinterested in their clients’ lives, but also initiate further discussions for creating intervention strategies that are effective at mitigating impairment caused by burnout (Merriman, 2015). Supervisors should be mindful that some counselors may be reluctant to discuss their burnout symptoms with their supervisors because of fear of a negative evaluation. Having a conversation regarding their burnout in a more confidential relationship, such as counseling, would be more effective and safer for the counselors to evaluate their impairment accurately and take actions as necessary. Implications for Counseling Center Directors According to our findings, without necessarily going through the stage of emotional and physical exhaustion, negative work environment can have tremendous negative impacts on counselors’ overall competencies. This finding stresses the role of directors of counseling centers to create a positive work environment for counselors. First, the directors may periodically examine counselors’ perceptions of their work environment to determine whether they feel frustrated with the working system or perceive
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