Towards a match between job demands and sources of social support : a study among oncology care providers

Recent studies have demonstrated that Karasek’s operationalization of job demands in his well-known Job Demand-Control (JD-C) model (Karasek, 1979), i.e., quantitative demands, cannot capture the complexities of working with patients or clients in health care work. In the present study on burnout among 816 Dutch oncology care providers, the model was extended by including, apart from quantitative demands, emotional job demands and organizational job demands. Moreover, the study examined the potential moderating role of three different sources of social support (colleagues, supervisor, and family) on the relationship between job demands and burnout thereby predicting a specific match between the source of social support and the type of job demand. The results showed that particularly quantitative job demands and organizational job demands significantly contributed to the prediction of burnout. In addition, social support from the family moderated the relationship between quantitative demands and depersonalization, and social support from colleagues moderated the relationship between emotional demands and depersonalization.