Compassion Fatigue In Nursing

Health providers suffer from an emotional problem called compassion fatigue. Often times compassion fatigue occurs do to the situations encountered by health care professionals and the pain they feel for the patients they care for. One of the essential components of health care is providing care is compassion

The concept of this EBP change project is compassion fatigue as it relates to nurses working in an emergency department (ED) dealing with secondary trauma causing symptoms of compassion fatigue (CF). Compassion is defined as the empathetic awareness of another’s distress, united with a desire to alleviate it (Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, n.d.). Fatigue is the physical or mental depletion that can be the result of strain, overwork, or disease (The Free Medical Dictionary,

Self-Care. Self-care is a crucial part of holistic nursing. As holistic nurses in practice, we should protect our personal health and safety in order to have the sustenance to be able to effectively and therapeutically care for others. Coping mechanisms are an immense help when it comes to preventing burnouts. A study published in the Journal of Pediatric Nursing (2015) examined 38 Pediatric ICU nurses who participated in a 5-minute mindfulness meditation before each work-shift for one month to investigate change in nursing stress, burnout, self-compassion, mindfulness, and job satisfaction. This exploration found that brief interventions that support on-the-job self-care and stress-reduction might prove useful in critical care hospital settings. Death and dying is something that is experienced throughout the human experience, yet in a beautiful twist everyone’s experiences with the process are different. On a stroke unit death sweeps the census on a regular basis. As a leader on my unit I have to be in tune with the nurses I am working with as well as the families who maybe struggling with the decision to change a code status to DNR, to cease escalation of care, or maybe to participate in organ donation, to ensure that my nurses remain professional and empathetic and the families are accommodated appropriately. It is important for

Working in the helping field has its many joys and privileges. Seeing a child, whose self esteem is at the bottom, light up when he/she accomplishes a new task, see the growth an alcohol and drug addict has made in treatment, or to see the family, that when they entered the door of your office, was on the verge of separation, but now are communicating and working out their own needs with little assistance from you, their therapist, is some of the most rewarding moments one can experience. However, to believe that life is all about these positive moments and that the battles you join in with others to overcome will not have an impact on you

Compassion is that feeling that motivates a person to help another human in need. Whether that need is an emotional, physical, or spiritual need. When caring for another human being, as nurses, we cannot help but feel that urge to help the person in front of us. We want to find the details that can

Compassion fatigue is widely known in the health care profession. Nurses working overtime and long working days to provide care for the patient and the patient’s families are a continuous stress on a nurse’s emotional and physical well-being especially if the nurse is providing the patient with end of life care as this contributes to both physical and mental work. Vital

The incidence of compassion fatigue is increasing due to the heavy responsibilities placed on nurses and other providers, physically, mentally, and spiritually. Compassion can be a limited resource, our system is rooted in cognitive networks that tire and need refueling (Carey, 2011). Healthcare workers spend more time charting than

When choosing to pursue a career in the health care field, most enter the workplace with the desire to help and provide care for patients who are critically ill (Lombardo & Eyre, 2011). Far too often, these health professionals who were once sympathetic and caring become victims of compassion fatigue (Lombardo & Eyre, 2011). As a working health professional it is ones duty to compassionately care for the sick, wounded and traumatized patients, which involves being exposed daily to the patient’s pain, suffering and trauma (Coetzee & Klopper, 2010). Experiencing this type of trauma first hand is an un-recognized side effect of being a health care professional (Briscoe, 2014). It is easy to get wrapped up in patients, their

Patient care may be at risk if a nurse is experiencing compassion fatigue. Nurses can start to exhibit distancing or desensitizing behaviors in order to cope with their stressors; thus leading to a decreased satisfaction in patient care and an ineffective therapeutic relationship. The failure of the nurse to identify their stress, can

Based on their findings, without intervention, that will equate to a turnover every 2 to 5.4 years. Education and intervention is essential in the prevention of symptoms that lead to compassion fatigue. If education and intervention is not part of an institutions standard process, there will continue to be a high turnover rate in nursing, including Critical Care RN’s. Discussed below are some recent research studies that were conducted to determine the extent of compassion fatigue and interventions used to prevent compassion

Similar to physical exhaustion, emotional exhaustion results from depletion of emotional resources and failure to restore one’s own emotional equilibrium. (Moore, 2009, p. 1) In today’s busy society the demands of life, job and family can be excessive and overwhelming. Combine these demands with the additional stressors of caring for another person or persons, increased demands of productivity with decreased personnel and the unrealistic expectations of one’s self or others and place all of this burden on one person, this would adequately describe the 21st century nurse. Nurses are continually engaged in emotional relationships with patients and their families which call upon the nurse to be in a constant supporting role. One reaches emotional exhaustion when this burden becomes too heavy to carry

summary, a fair amount of research has been conducted on burnout and compassion fatigue. it is important to understand the individual factors that lead to the development of burnout and compassion fatigue. Another purpose is to understand whether or not the experience of STS is limited only to those who have direct contact with individuals who are experiencing trauma symptoms. Additionally, most literature that discusses coping with compassion fatigue focuses on self-care techniques rather than on an effective style of cognitive appraisal. Common assumptions are that effective coping styles for healthcare workers will generalize to the mental health field. The present study also aims to identify a coping profile indicating whether or not a

Compassion is a crucial aspect of nursing; it involves seeing the patients as more than just a medical problem. Patients look to nurses as a source of comfort to help them deal with their emotions and understand their medical problems. In Norway, a study was conducted to find the role of compassion in nursing and

Since the 19th century, compassion has been emphasized as a focal point within the field of nursing, likely due to the strong religious influence of many early nursing schools. During pioneer Florence Nightingale’s time, compassion was viewed as the very “essence of nursing” and was strongly emphasized within curriculums for most of the 20th century. More recently, researchers have recognized that the concept of compassion has begun fading from the field of nursing due to numerous factors, among them the more recent emphasis on “professionalization, medicalization, consumerization, and secularization” of nursing and health care in general. Compassion has also begun to diminish due to the emotionally

I found that even though it appears these articles are speaking about two very different types of patients, I am reminded of the child, or infant organ donor. I think that these two theories of nursing can be used together. I am also reminded of compassion fatigue, “Nurses must also recognize the need for their own care. As a consequence of stress relating to caring for suffering patients and their families, caregivers can experience compassion fatigue, a secondary traumatic stress disorder”