Combating Compassion Fatigue



Combating Compassion Fatigue

Introduction

For the longest time, a career in healthcare has always been considered to be one of the most noble and prestigious profession in the world, may it be the doctors or nurses. Moreover, these professionals also attempt to brace themselves to the amount of hard work, lengthy working hours and difficult workplace conditions they will have to face despite all the rewards. Nurses preferably do not anticipate that their nature of work is unique because it involves taxing a certain emotional labor for patients and their families.

Nurses usually enter this field anticipating that their “white coats,” educational training, clinical and teaching experience will help them to maintain their sanity and balance the suffering and pain they have to encounter every day. With the passage of time, all the energy and motivation slowly depletes and leads to the physical, emotional and mental downfall of the individual (Stamm, 1999). Oncology nurses should be kind, compassionate and empathetic in nature because of their job nature. Lewin (1996) also stated compassion to be the true essence of a healthcare professional which enables them to be energetic and curative.

Discussion

Initially, Joinson (1992) recognized and introduced the word compassion fatigue in the people of the healthcare industry (nurses, doctors, psychotherapists etc. Compassion fatigue is a phenomenon in which the caregiver undergoes a downfall in their emotional, psychological and physical state due to the acute or constant care of people incapacitated by intense anguish, ordeal, pain, or adversity. The caregiver takes it upon themselves to absorb any ordeal or pain experienced by their patient due to the nature of their job, which ultimately leads to crossing a boundary which enables them self care (also called counter transference). Compassion fatigue if not looked into will ultimately lead to a downfall not only in their professional life but also have a significant impact on their personal, psychological, physical and social life. As research progressed, compassion fatigue then it could also be associated with other terms such as burnout, secondary traumatic stress and vicarious traumatization.

When an excessive amount of vigor, strength, or resource is spent, then in due course, it leads to an emotional state of experiencing a sense of disappointment, weariness and constant fatigue which can be termed as, Burnout (Freudenberger, 1974). Similar to the compassion fatigue, burnout also has a main impact on the physical, psychological, and behavioral well being. Vicarious traumatization can ...