The dream of every aspiring nursing student and registered nurse is providing not only physical care, but also emotional, mental and spiritual support to patients. Nevertheless, just like in many other professions, nurses have to deal with environmental and personal challenges as they provide care to the patients’ needs which at times turn out to be complex and diverse. As a result, nurses involved in the provision of direct care to particularly terminally ill patients end up suffering from compassion fatigue (CF) (Van Mol et al., 2015).
According to Chitra (2011), compassion fatigue is the price that caring and compassionate nurses have to pay and this involves mental, emotional, spiritual and physical exhaustion. Potter et al., (2013) noted
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As earlier mentioned, Lazarus and Folkman’s theory has three main concepts. Stress, cognitive appraisal and coping; on the stress concept, a major underpinning is the impact of stress on an individual which is based more on the individuals’ feeling of vulnerability, threat and ability to deal with the stressful situation or event. Compassion fatigue is a culmination of the effects of continuous and cumulative process that is caused by compassionate care to terminally ill patients and exposure to stress (Coetzee and Klopper, 2010). Utilizing the concept of stress as proposed by Lazarus and Folkman (1984), compassion fatigue nurse victims must make a determination of what should actually amount to …show more content…
Lazarus (1984) definition of stress (earlier mentioned) is a situation where an individual feels that the demands are more than the personal and socials resources. Utilizing the second concept in Lazarus’s theory- Cognitive appraisal, nurses experiencing compassion fatigue must assess whether their current situation threatens their well-being and whether there exists resources to meet the demands of the stressors (Gary Sturt, 2016). According to Gary Sturt (2016), there are the primary and secondary cognitive appraisal. During the primary cognitive appraisal, a nurse will be seeking answers as to the meaning of the current event (compassion fatigue) with regard to their well-being, that is, whether the current situation is irrelevant, good or stressful. During the secondary cognitive appraisal, a nurse will be seeking an answer as to whether there is the ability to deal with the problem (Gary Sturt,
Skovholt (2008) introduces the definition of burnout in this chapter of his book The resilient Practitioner and explains why it is critical to the therapeutic relationship to avoid it. He begins by defining “compassion fatigue” from Figley (1995. p.7) as the behaviors and emotions resulting from knowing about a traumatic event experienced by someone else and the resulting stress from wanting to or helping this person. Compassion fatigue is further distinguished from “burnout” by stating that it involves higher levels of helplessness and isolation from a support network than burnout.
My concept is compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue (CF) as it relates to nurses working in an emergency department dealing with secondary trauma causing symptoms of compassion fatigue. The measurement tool, which I will use, is the Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) scale. This scale has been in use since 1995 and has had several revisions, the last one updated in 2010 and it has been translated into 17 languages. The ProQOL measures compassion satisfaction (CS) and CF and its subcategories, burnout (BO) and secondary traumatic stress (STS).
Caused by the constant demands of work and lack of taking breaks, burnout is a challenge in itself and can get even worse if gone untreated. More and more nurses have begun to feel the effects of burnout, raising a dire concern that healthcare workers while taking care of others, must also remember to care for themselves which can, unfortunately, go neglected when the work is so heavily focused on saving the lives of
Poor professional quality of life(PQOL), results in difficulty with staff retention, lateness, absenteeism, and low morale resulting to an unhealthy workplace which ends up affecting patient care and outcomes. The contributing factors for compassionate fatigue are the feeling of unprepared to care for those who are suffering, death overload and moral distress. Staff members with compassionate fatigue, feel emotionally exhausted, but they keep going, caring for others even though it hurts them. When compassionate fatigue is unresolved, it leads to burnout which develops gradually.
(Abdulla, Al-Qahtani, & Al-Kuwari, 2011). One study revealed that burnout syndrome is common among critical care nurses, because they work with more critical and traumatic patients burnout syndrome is not only affect the nurse but extend to their quality of care that delivered for their patient.(Moss, Good, Gozal, Kleinpell, & Sessler., 2016). Organizational and environment factors such as excessive workload, staffing shortage, lack of empowerment lead to burnout which compromise nurse’s ability to provide high quality care. ( McHugh, Kutney, Cimiotti, Sloane, & Aiken., 2011). Burnout ,quality of care and patients outcome Different studies have explained the relation between burnout syndrome, stress in work environment ,and patients satisfaction which assessed the quality of nursing care provided, the high quality care the more patient satisfaction.
We have talked about compassion fatigue last year in research. Compassion fatigue is when nurses or other health care professionals become indifferent to requests
- Nurse fatigue is a clinical problem that cannot be overlooked. - Nurse fatigue impedes nursing competency and patient safety. - Long working hour highly associate with nurse fatigue - Nurse fatigue increases medical errors that threaten patients’ safety and outcome; put nurses own health in danger. - Nurse fatigue increase healthcare system cost. - ANA spotted the serious consequences of nurse fatigue and posed a position statement that required nurses and healthcare facilities to work together to reduce nurse fatigue.
1. Introduction Compassion fatigue experienced by doctors and nurse, the term is used to describe their emotionless and apathy to the patients. However, today, compassion fatigue appears everywhere, not only happens with healthy professionals but also with all the caregivers, and even to us and to any person. Compassion fatigue becomes more common in media. In fact, compassion fatigue has been called a form of burnout to describe ‘journalists’ secondary trauma in being routinely exposed to atrocities.
Most of my nursing career consist of the fast-paced emergency room and critical care areas. These areas have honed my skills in handling high-stress situations and delivering efficient care to patients in need. However, while my professional focus has been on acute medical conditions, my compassion for individuals facing mental health challenges has always been at the forefront of my interest. Moreover, the personal experiences within my own family have provided me with firsthand insights to the realm of mental health challenges. These encounters have bestowed upon me an invaluable understanding and empathy towards individuals navigating the complexities of mental well-being.
SDLA 4: Activity 1 Palliative care continues to evolve in providing better end-of-life care and so does nursing care. Thus, nursing practice is enhanced to satisfy the demand of the palliative care. A nurse provides complex care and fulfils the needs of the patients. Nursing involves in caring work, which focus on patient experiencing agony in palliative and haematological cancer care. Nurses worked in a taxing environment, that can be highly stressful, and often they experience physical, psychological and spiritual exhaustion.
A Compassion Fatigue Among ED Nurses Problem When one thinks about nursing, caring, empathy, and compassion come to mind. There is 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 predominant problems in many Emergency Departments (ED). Nurses perform a number of procedures throughout the day, but primarily the thing that they deliver the most is themselves (Harris & Quinn-Griffin, 2015).
Nurses fatigue is growing problem nurse face each day in the healthcare environment, and he can be caused by long hours, sleep deprivation, and possibly by accepting extra assignments can be dangerous for both nurses and patient. These inadequacies can result in major implications for the health and safety of registered nurses and can compromise patient care which can lead to fatalities. (American Nurses Association, 2014). In my experience, being fatigued from working much 12-hour shifts consecutively was very difficult as I felt extremely tired, resulting in lack of focus, missing important details during the handing over the process with impaired cognitive functioning. This I found was detrimental to the patients and myself as it impedes quality and has a deleterious effect on patient safety.
This feeling of this strain was called burnout by Maslach (1993), who suggested that individuals should avoid emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment at work. The concept itself emerged from care-giving and service occupations due to common consequence of atypical stress reactions to challenges at work created by emotionally overwhelming situations between care provider and client behaviour (Maslach, Shaufeli & Leiter,
Health care careers like nursing are meant to be all about taking care of the ill and the hurt, to show compassion to others that need medical care. Nurses go into their career because of their passion to help and heal the sick. Although nurses are compassionate caregivers, they also cope with a variety of workplace stressors, many of which can lead them to demonstrate less than effective emotional responses at any given time (Littlejohn). There needs to be a substantial change to prevent these stressors from causing such a burnout in the nursing field such as adding more staff to help, to the prevention of the older nurses bullying the younger incoming nurses.
Two concepts are centralized to The Lazarus psychological stress theory: Appraisal (i.e., individuals’ evaluation of the significance of what is happening for their well-being, and Coping (i.e., individuals’ efforts in thought and action to manage specific demands). The theory states that stress is regarded as a relational concept meaning stress is not defined as a specific pattern of physiological, behavioural, or subjective reasons. Instead, stress is viewed as a relationship between individuals and their environment (Krohne, 2002). Likewise, the study is focused on stress, the factors that affect it, and the environment that stress inhabits in.