Intervention studies on enhancing work well-being, reducing burnout, and improving recovery experiences among Hong Kong health care workers and teachers

This article reports two secondary intervention studies on stress management in Hong Kong adopting a positive psychology approach. The first intervention study was conducted among health care workers to reduce burnout and enhance work well-being (job satisfaction, physical/psychological symptoms) and positive emotions. A one-group pretest-posttest design was adopted. One thousand thirty-four health care employees were recruited from hospitals to participate in a 2-day training course held in 17 separate classes. The results obtained from paired t tests consistently demonstrated an improvement in work-related well-being and a reduction in burnout after the training. To investigate whether the improvements were specifically caused by the intervention, the second intervention study adopted a quasi-experimental method with a control group, also using a pretest-posttest design, and with an additional aim of improving the recovery experiences. Fifty teachers were recruited for the experimental group, and 48 for the control group. The results show that teachers in the experimental group scored significantly higher in recovery experiences (particularly mastery) compared to those in the control group. Implications of the findings are discussed.