Compassion Fatigue In Nursing

Compassion Fatigue

Nurses are called to care for patients with respect, responsibility, love, empathy and compassion. Expressed by Kate Sheppard, “nurses who feel satisfied with their work feel fully engaged, energized, and a great deal of satisfaction from providing excellent care,” (2015). This care is often compromised by secondary traumatic stress and burnout, both a consequence unique to those in the health care field. Compassion fatigue, a complex phenomenon, is a modern concept rarely seen outside of nursing. In developing a theory, concept analysis is essential to the nursing profession. This concept analysis was guided by the professional quality of life (ProQOL) model, a conceptual design of compassion fatigue developed by Beth Stamm

and Charles Figley (Sheppard, 2015). The purpose of this paper is to define and explain the concept of caring by performing a complete literature review. Also examined and discussed, are compassion fatigue’s defining attributes, antecedents, consequences, empirical referents, construct cases and theoretical applications.
Definition/Explanation of Concept
With compassion fatigue being a fairly new concept in the nursing profession, the urgency to gain knowledge on this topic is imperative as documented cases of suffering are on the rise. Merriam-Webster (2018) defines compassion as the sympathetic consciousness of other’s distress together with a desire to alleviate it. Notably, compassion is foundational in nursing which makes the definition essential. According to Kelly and Todd (2017), compassion fatigue is both a psychological and physiological response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stresses that affect those in the Caregiving profession. Influenced by direct patient care, nurses are predisposed to physical and emotional distress (Melvin, 2015). Furthermore, this concept is greater defined by Christina Melvin as an exhaustion to those exposed to “seriously ill, traumatized, suffering, and dying patients,” (2015).
It is important to remember that burnout and secondary traumatic stress does not define compassion fatigue. However, they contribute to the characteristics of this nursing concept.
Discussed in the article, When Compassion is Lost, environmental factors also influence compassion satisfaction amongst nursing staff (Henson, 2017). Nurses, in particular, work in a fast-paced, highly stressful atmosphere. Adding high workloads, poor nurse staffing, advanced, high acuity patients, and the increasing complexity of health care create unhealthy work environments which leads to the development of compassion fatigue (Henson, 2017).