"Noble Suffering": Social Suffering Theory Applied to the Experiences of Early-Career Stage Social Workers in the Midwestern United States

Abstract

There are a wide array of psychological and emotional occupational harms prevalent amongst the caring professions. Conceptually these phenomena have coalesced under terms like moral distress and injury, compassion fatigue, and burnout. While these terms have a rich body of literature developing their definitional constructs, discussion is still fluid on the boundaries amongst and between them when focused on the caring professions to include physicians, nurses, psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers. This study draws from semi-structured phenomenological interviews conducted with early career social workers possessing less than five years of professional experience independent of their academic preparation. This study finds that the early-career experiences of social workers including their academic phase are saturated by a social system of cyclical burnout well beyond the syndromic understanding of the term.