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.…
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.…
Cognitive is a major concept of compassion fatigue. One will also experience a decrease in self-esteem and self-worth ( ). The capability to remain motivated on a task has become increasing difficult. Impacting the health care professionals aptitude to complete their duties. Coworkers will observe a decline in work presentation. Once there is a change in ones work presentation there is also a decrease in enthusiasm, absenteeism, negativity, and low morale ( ).…
I chose this article because she expressed the importance of a caring environment to keep patients overall satisfied with their hospital experience. While providing this theory DudKiewicz encountered the overwhelming demand on healthcare workers leading to stress, which had a major impact on the a person’s behaviour. Due to this negative behaviour it resulted to decreasing client- nurse relationships. To prove her theory Dudkiewicz compared Jean Watson theory of caring to express the importance of caring to an individual; therefore showing that caring conveys a positive levels of satisfaction. It was determined that satisfaction levels did improve significantly following a caring-based intervention (Dudkiewicz, 2014, Bell,…
Kelly, L., Runge, J., & Spencer, C. (2015). Predictors of Compassion Fatigue and Compassion Satisfaction in Acute Care Nurses. Journal Of Nursing Scholarship, 47(6), 522-528. doi:10.1111/jnu.12162Mayo Clinic Staff. (2016, November 03). Urinary tract infection (UTI) Prevention. Retrieved March 12, 2017, from http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/urinary-tract-infection/basics/prevention/con-20037892…
Helping people is a very necessary and extremely hard occupation. Not every person has a passion to help others, thus very few people can be care givers. This job is very stressful and difficult. Caring victims or seriously ill men nurses face negative emotions, suffering, and anxiety. Thus, sometimes caregivers become disappointed, exhausted and unable to do their work. Their constant stress and pervasive negative attitude are the consequences of the features of the job and called compassion fatigue. This phenomenon, its peculiarities and the steps to prevent it will be carefully analyzed in this paper.…
Compassion fatigue is not a new concept. As long as individuals have needed help, people have come to the rescue. Originally it was identified in social workers, as they see sad, sometimes devastating situations that they must deal with on a daily basis. In 1992, Joinson identified the concept of compassion fatigue in nursing. According to Potter, Deshields, Divanbeigi, Berger, Cipriano, Norris & Olsen, (2010), Joinson identified behaviors that were characteristic of compassion fatigue, including chronic fatigue, irritability, dread going to work, aggravation of physical ailments, and a lack of joy in life. Dr. Charles Figley expanded on the concept and more formally defined compassion fatigue in 1995. Figley explained compassion fatigue as…
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,…
If you ask anyone in the field of healthcare, they will tell you that nursing is a very demanding profession. Many nurses feel weighed down by the emotional and physical demands of their chosen career. They may feel that their efforts go without acknowledgement. They may feel overwhelmed by their workload and feel they do not have adequate support or recourses to confidently and efficiently perform their roles. Part of the nurse’s role is to exhibit compassion for patients and their family members. Yet, compassion is an emotion that requires inner conviction…
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…
Gilmore, C. (2012). Compassion fatigue -- what it is and how to avoid it. Kai Tiaki Nursing New…
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,…
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.…
Empathy is a significant and influential part of the healthcare system. It is important for health professionals to include a true understanding and compassion to their patients; moreover, psychologically a person is more capable of getting through a health problem when they are approaching their issue in a more assured approach. This encourages more effective communication between the patient and the healthcare provider. According to Kasley Killam, effective communication is associated with higher patient satisfaction, better adherence to medications, lower likelihood of mistakes, and fewer malpractices. Based on research, effective physician-patient communication results in more positive health outcomes for the patient (Killam, 2014). The…
According to the literature gained, it was stated in only Brunero, Lamont & Coates’s (2006) study that as the age increased the empathetic skill points decreased. In contrast, Ozcan (2012) found that the age group of the nurses did not affect the empathetic skill. Further, in general, in the natural order of things, it follows that the older generation exhibits higher level of empathy. They have gained more insights about human nature and a deeper understanding of their responsibilities. Findings revealed that growing old gives wisdom, profound knowledge and deeper understanding of people, events and other happenings around them as mentioned by Bulusan (2002). Also, Piguerra (2005) pointed out that individuals have acquired skills and experience…