Preview

Compassion Fatigue Theory

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
107 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Compassion Fatigue Theory
The Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) (Stamm, 2009) analyzes the comprehensive impact of helping including the therapeutic factor of altruism with occupational challenges (Stamm). Compassion satisfaction describes the positive concept within the theory and represents altruism. The negative concept of compassion fatigue represents two elements, burnout and secondary trauma. Secondary traumatic stress incorporates a helper’s fear related to enduring similar trauma as his/her clients. In summary, the ProQOL (Stamm, 2009) uses the factors found in the compassion fatigue literature: compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress (Stamm,
2009). The three constructs described above and the Professional Quality of Life theory

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Research among mental health care professionals, indicate that “ in a variety of roles such as nursing, social work, psychology, psychiatry, case managers and mental health workers are often required to provide a high degree of care to clients over time which can result in physical and psychological complaints often referred to as compassion fatigue”(2013). It is argued that “being affected with a stress-related condition, such as compassion fatigue or burnout, does not only affect the health care workers themselves but also anyone around them including patients who report lower satisfaction with services” (2013). This was true for Lorna Fermin a case manager at South End Community Health Center. She accepted a position with the center, in desperate need for employment after…

    • 696 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Having a service like yoga that can benefit caregivers of older adults with dementia is essential because it ultimately can mean that caregivers are in a better physical and mental state which then means they can better care for their loved one as well. In addition self-care for caregivers is important because “over time, the stress of helping others can cause symptoms like anxiety, sleeplessness and irritability that interfere with everyday life. This response is often referred to as "compassion fatigue." Left untreated, compassion fatigue can lead to burnout and other conditions that may not go away on their own” (2014). Thus, it’s important that caregivers strive to avoid burned-out and implementing yoga for caregivers at adult day centers…

    • 235 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Compassion is defined as a sympathetic consciousness of others distress together with a desire to alleviate it (Merriam. Webster.com). It has a fundamental role among the healthcare workers. Especially among nurses, when they are indulging in bedside care for their patients. It helps the patients to relieve their stress and tension. Nurses have to go through different job description during their twelve hours shift. It start from the assessment of the patient, check vital signs, carryout various safety and comfort measures, administering medication and even to participate the resuscitative measures to save the life of a person. During this period due to emotional stress and physical fatigue make a person exhausted and drained. Nurses have to undergo the sane process many days a week for many years. So there is no surprise if any health care worker is emotionally and physically tired and upset. This is called as compassion fatigue. It can be due to the over strain and stress from the work load and demand from the patient and family. Most often it happens due to the continuous work over load, stress, inadequate relaxation time, over demanding. It can leads to the health care workers to be burn out and also leads to secondary traumatization. This assignment explores about the nature and causes of five major concepts of compassion fatigue. It also address the physical, spiritual and emotional needs of the care giver and giving examples of coping strategies and resources to be used by the care giver.…

    • 1457 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Compassion. Hidden agenda. The difference. City dweller Barbara Lazear Ascher, in her essay “On Compassion,” recalls in her own words, “a couple of brief encounters with homeless people”. While maintaining a critical tone, Ascher utilizes an anecdote, a personal experience, and appeals to her audience’s ethical values as strategies to fulfill her purpose. Ascher effectively achieves her purpose to convince her audience, people inhabiting cities, there is a lack of compassion when concerning the homeless.…

    • 855 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Helping others puts you in direct contact with other people’s lives. As you probably have experienced, your compassion for those you help has both positive and negative aspects. Compassion fatigue can strike the most caring and dedicated nurses, social workers, physicians and personal support workers alike. These changes can affect both their personal and professional lives with symptoms such as difficulty concentrating, intrusive imagery, and loss of hope, exhaustion and irritability. It can also lead to profound shifts in the way helpers view the world and their loved ones. Additionally, helpers may become dispirited and increasingly cynical at work, they may make clinical errors, violate client boundaries, lose a respectful stance towards their clients and contribute to a toxic work environment. It has been shown that, when we are suffering from compassion fatigue, we work more rather than less. What suffers is our health, our relationship with others, our personal lives and eventually our clients.…

    • 782 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Vulnerable - Peter had to endure through days where he was tormented daily by those bullies. He had days where it seemed like it would never end. The minutes felt like hours. It made him weaker in the mind, adding on to his fragility. While other kids in his grade can just ignore and push problems to the side, he was constantly unable to get those bullies off his mind. So he then created a game where smart kids that get bullied just like him can share the pleasure of shooting up a school which had those bullies in it. It portrayed what he wanted to do to them and can instantly be seen as what his dream was to do. His actions spoke for him that he needed help. With Peter's mind already set to his primary goal to kill those who tormented him and never let him have a good day, his life was about to hit rock bottom and there will be no way back up.…

    • 376 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Aside from the obvious detriment that compassion fatigue puts on patient care, the condition affects the provider outside of the clinical setting as well. With the continual absorption and internalization of the patient’s emotions, compassion fatigue has a pronounced personal effect. Compassion fatigue can cause desensitivity, isolation, and substance abuse, which can result in an “inability to empathize with coworkers and even family members” (OverExposed: The Cost of Compassion). Imagine being a surgeon treating a child with a severed finger, then after a long day of working you come back home to your child crying over a scraped knee. Most likely the response to your child’s scraped knee would be less empathic when compared to another parent,…

    • 153 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    a big factor in the development of compassion fatigue. A nurse should be able to recognize their…

    • 822 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Compassion fatigue is occurring frequently all around the world. Compassion fatigue is a physical and mental manifestation of overwhelming exhaustion and emotional withdrawal that can occur in people who care for sick or distressed people over an extended period of time. Compassion fatigue has been shown to affect nurses especially because they feel guilt and shame for becoming emotionally withdrawn. With most nurses nursing is not simply what they do for a job, nursing is who they are. Helping and caring for other people is a driving force for many people to go into nursing. This drive does not just turn off when a nurse clocks out. A nurse's noble drive to be caring and helpful to all puts them at great risk for compassion fatigue. Studies…

    • 210 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    A packet that included 3 surveys in which no identification information, was attached to the payroll envelopes of the eligible nurses. These surveys took into consideration demographics, personal/ environmental characteristics, coping strategies, and exposure to traumatic events. The Professional Quality of Life Scale and the Penn Inventory were the instruments to conduct this research. The final results based on a total of 128 participants, 35.9% had scores consistent with burnout, 27.3% reported compassion fatigue, 7% reported secondary traumatic stress, and 78.9% had high compassion satisfaction. Common characteristics correlating with burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary traumatic stress were negative coworker relationships, use of medicinals, and higher number of hours per shift. High compassion satisfaction correlated with greater strength of supports, higher participation in exercise, use of meditation, and positive coworker relationships. Caring for trauma patients may lead to BO, CF, and STS; identifying predictors of these can inform the development of interventions to mitigate or minimize BO, CF, and STS in trauma nurses. (Hinderer, et.al,…

    • 1008 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Illness Theory Essay

    • 914 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Propositions are statements that establish the relationships between concepts. Within the mentioned theory, there are many propositions that can be established. One such proposition is that uncertainty in illness results from a lack of cognitive schema development when a person has an illness related event. Another proposition would be that individual cognitively process illness-related stimuli and structure meaning from the events (McEwen & Wills, p.243, 2014). It can also be said that changes in uncertainty occur over time, either creating positive or negative assessment of uncertainty. Lastly, the theory proposes that uncertainty is an opportunity. Meaning that being uncertain “opens up the consideration of multiple possibilities…

    • 914 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Healthcare providers have agreed when entering the healthcare profession to give the utmost care to all patients and families. They have dedicated their time and energy to assure all patients are cared for the way the want and need to be treated. Many endless hours are provided to assure that quality and empathetic care is given, which can often end up in what is called compassion fatigue and caregiver burnout. There are warning signs to both issues that healthcare providers can be on the lookout for to lessen the risk of developing caregiver burnout and compassion fatigue and strategies and resources that can help the healthcare professionals and caregivers to overcome it.…

    • 1264 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Larson, C.C. Gilbertson, D.L., & Powell, J.A. (1978). Therapist Burnout: Perspectives on a critical issue. Social Casework, 59: 563-565.…

    • 2459 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Leadership Fatigue Essay

    • 597 Words
    • 3 Pages

    It’s something no leader wants to accept, but leadership fatigue can hit hard like a ton of blocks. Although before it does, there are usually warning signs. According to the American Psychological Association, fatigue is “described as emotional weariness and bad attitudes against one’s co-workers and job role.” It can display in a number of tangible ways, everything from headaches to gastrointestinal ailments, muscle disorders, high blood pressure, sleeping problems and a lower immune system, resulting in more colds and sicknesses in general. But it can also emerge through a negative, uptight attitude, depression, unhappiness, never ending sarcasm, finger pointing and playing the victim. It's been our encounter at MAP that when leaders undergo burnout, it’s not because they don’t like their jobs. More often than not, it’s more a matter of battling to conserve that crucial work-life balance, commonly indicative of a complete array of complicated issues and factors. If this seems recognizable, or if you deem yourself somewhat of a self-professed workhorse experiencing exhaustion, don’t give up hope. There are things…

    • 597 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Based on the article given, titled “Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded” by Dalai Lama, the author addresses that people in this world faces different kind of problem than they had before. It is no longer consists of physical problems but also emotional problems. They are now facing the fear of being left alone and underappreciated. This problem arises because of the concern regarding the future. They are afraid that they would not be successful in their life. They think that they could not do better as other people. They also tend to underestimate themselves, expecting to fail in everything they do. These kinds of thoughts will make the feeling of unneeded grow inside of them. The fear of being unneeded also affects those who live…

    • 1494 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays