Compassion Fatigue In Social Work

The day comes and you think you cannot hear one more story of trauma. This is not a sign of burnout but of compassion fatigue. It’s a signal to you that it is time to step back and do self-care. Burnout and compassion fatigue are often confused as the same thing. The difference between them is that burnout builds up gradually over time and resolves itself when the volunteer or practitioner takes a break or goes to other work, even in the same field.

One of the major emotional disorders that occurs in health care providers who experience compassion fatigue is depression. Depression will lead to the individual experiencing increasing feelings of sadness and helplessness. Individuals may experience a loss of interest in previous hobbies, fear, guilt, and anxiety. The person may be describe as an emotional roller coaster who is sad, angry, and overly sensitive from one minute to the next. Often times the person is emotionally numb and depleted.

The warning signs for compassion fatigue may include; decreased interest or concern, heightened arousal, startling easily, isolating, depression, anger, manifestation of physical illnesses, increased irritability, substance and alcohol abuse, overeating, sexual dysfunction, sleep disturbances, and decreased ability to balance empathy and objectivity (Pfifferling & Gilley, 2000). Those suffering from compassion fatigue have described the feeling of being out of control, and the more work or care the provider does for others, the less compassionate they feel until they feel hopeless, helpless, as though they have nothing else to give. Some providers may be more easily susceptible to compassion fatigue after experiencing personal trauma. While the effects of compassion fatigue can cause confusion, anxiety and heartache, one important key to recovery is to identify the symptoms, so the healthcare worker can work towards self-restoration and recovery.

Health caregivers are the group of people mostly at risk of developing compassion fatigue. Most of the times, compassion fatigue may be as a result of the situations the care providers encountered and the pain they feel for their patients. One of the vital element of healthcare is providing a compassionate care. Compassion is defined as being aware of other people suffering, and desire to help to them reduce the suffering (Ruysschaert, 2009). Compassion fatigue is seen as a form of burnout that affect the health care provider which manifest itself as physical, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion (Lynch & Lobo, 2012). The four major factors that can lead to compassion fatigue are, giving others too much caring and not enough care to self, unresolved past trauma, inability to control stress at work, and lack of satisfaction in the work (Ruysschaert, 2009). Compassion fatigue occurs when the caregivers are milked of their sense of wellbeing, comfort, their purpose in life, strength and all the good qualities they have. It is important for those that caring for others to also pay attention to their own needs. Taking care of your own needs means that you will be healthy and therefore be more able to care for others. The caregiver needs to be able to recognize and discuss compassion in order to avoid it.

While working in an emergency department (ED), nurses are expected to show compassion even when they are exhausted? Over tired? Over worked? Fatigued? The purpose of this evidence-based practice (EBP) project was to educate ED nurses on compassion fatigue (CF) risk factors, causes, and symptoms as well as assist them in its identification among each other and within themselves. Further, the project sought to provide nurses with skills in order to prevent CF. A two-hour workshop consisting of a PowerPoint presentation was implemented in a busy emergency department on the coast of NJ. Teaching nurses about compassion fatigue and ways in which to alleviate and prevent it were stressed. Self-regulation and self-care practices were introduced using interactive activities. Over the next four weeks, emails were sent reiterating self-care and self-regulatory techniques. A Pretest-posttest design used the Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) measure to determine if burnout and secondary traumatic stress (both components of CF) and compassion satisfaction improved from the workshop. A comparative means analysis showed a decline in CF.

According to Coetzee and Hester (2010) compassion fatigue was adopted as a synonym for secondary traumatic stress disorder. The aim of their 2010 concept analysis of the topic was to further define compassion fatigue as it applies to the nursing practice. They describe the process of compassion fatigue from just simply discomfort to compassion stress and finally fatigue. (p.1) Their analysis describes how damaging compassion fatigue can be on a nurse’s ability to provide compassionate care. The information is vital to the field of nursing and the outcomes of our patients. Specifically, it plays an important role in my personal practice. It’s a nurse responsibility to provide compassion care for the ill. In the process nurses are exposed daily to their patient’s pain trauma, and their struggles. This and other factors such as unsafe work conditions can take a toll on nurses and their functionality.

The phrase compassion fatigue was initially identified by C. Joinson in 1992 while doing research on burnout in emergency room nurses. Joinson described situations where nurses “had either turned off their own feelings or experienced helplessness and anger in response to the stress they [felt] watching patients go through devastating illnesses or trauma” (Yoder, 2010, p. 191). Joinson’s work identified behaviors in emergency room nurses that became identified as compassion fatigue. Symptoms of compassion fatigue include “chronic fatigue, irritability, dread going to work, aggravation of physical ailments and a lack of joy in

A person’s current life’s circumstances, history, coping style and personality type all determine how compassion fatigue will impact them. If a person is encountering any other stress outside work, then that person is highly likely to experience compassion fatigue, on the other hand a person who is not experiencing any outside stressors may not arrive at that final stage in the process of CF. Study have shown that a person’s history affects the way in which he/she is affected by traumatic events. Psychologies implemented a theory in which variables, measure exposure to stressful events; the survey inquired about a number of negative life events (e.g., getting divorced, having problems at work) that could have happened

As with any career, human service professionals face potential challenges that make it difficult for them to accomplish the objectives of their positions. When challenged with these obstacles, it becomes increasingly difficult for the human service professional to deliver the outstanding help and care a client needs. One such challenge is that of burnout, a reaction to the stress and strain inherent in a position that causes individuals to adopt a negative attitude about work and clients as well as become detached with the expectations of their position and its overall purpose (Woodside & McClam, 2015, p. 256). There are also physical reactions to burnout, including exhaustion, stomach issues or other illnesses, and body pain (Woodside & McClam, 2015, p. 256). This burnout can be triggered by a number of different factors, from difficulties in allocating scarce resources (Woodside & McClam, 2015, p. 249) and motivating clients to help themselves (Woodside & McClam, 2015, p. 256), to self-neglect on the part of the helper (Jackson, 2014).

When a counselor or Therapist work in agencies they need have a wellness plan in place to prevent these types of symptoms from being over worked with limited support available to delegate other responsibilities of their workload to others. Since agencies may put the counselor or psychotherapist at a higher risk due to emotional exhaustion. A state of isolation and detachment causes a person to experience compassion fatigue when counselors or psychotherapists constantly interact with clients who experience distress. Compassion fatigue impede on a counselor’s empathy which causes them to extreme

Compassion fatigue is something I had never thought of before reading obstacle 5 in The Christianity 9 to 5 Bible Study. Although I have never felt the feelings described with this problem at my current job, I can relate with the symptoms at one of my old summer jobs. I spent two summers working for a grain elevator, where I did everything that was asked of me. Being both a summer job, and one that revolved around farming, I knew that the hours were going to vary from week to week. During the heart of the season, there were weeks where, as a summer employee, I was working nearly 80 hours. Spending that much time with the same group of co-worked can become taxing. Especially when the co-workers often were lazy. The company employed 8 people,

When one thinks about nursing, caring, empathy, and compassion come to mind. There exists a link, an unbreakable union, for nurses that "compassion fatigue is the cost of caring for others in pain" (Boyle, 2015, p. 49). Compassion fatigue (CF) and its impact on nurses are predominating problems in various Emergency Departments (ED). Nurses perform a number of procedures throughout the day; however, the essential item that they deliver the utmost is themselves (Harris & Quinn-Griffin, 2015). Nurses provide care, succor, kindness, and tenderness to patients, families, other nurses; support to doctors and advanced practitioners, and convey directions to medical technicians, nursing assistants, and other staff every day. Eventually, the nurse can have their internal well of compassion come up empty, leaving them with CF. Simply stated, CF is the inability for nurses to nurture patients due to secondary traumatic stress disorder (Hinderer et al., 2014). This study explores what is compassion fatigue and ways to alleviate it and prevent it from taking away the love of nursing.

Compassion fatigue, sometimes called secondary trauma, is when an individual is around a person’s/people’s trauma so that that they themselves begins to be impacted emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and/or relationally. A person can also experience a form of compassion fatigue, known as vicarious trauma, when a traumatic event doesn’t happen to them directly but they do witness the event. Individuals like caregivers, doctors, counselors, social workers, chaplains, etc. are very susceptible to compassion fatigue because in their line of work caring for individuals who have been traumatized is come place.

A cross-sectional study using survey methodology was undertaken to evaluate compassion fatigue, burnout, and compassion satisfaction among oncology social workers (Simon et al.,

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