Compassion Fatigue Analysis

Action and emergency situations are what trauma nurses live for. They treat patients in state of emergency and handle different situations where the cause of injury or disease is not yet identified. Furthermore, they are trained to deal with a variety of different accidents, and work in emergency wards and other hospital locations to provide many different forms of health care. According to Katherine A. Hinderer in the article “Burnout, Compassion Fatigue, Compassion Satisfaction, and Secondary Traumatic Stress in Trauma Nurses,” “trauma nursing encompasses the care of a trauma patient through the entire continuum of care.” As a consequence, a great number of this nurses suffer from compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction, burnout, stress
She states that compassion fatigue is defined as the loss of a nurse’s ability to nurture patients. In a sample of 114 nurses 84.4% had moderate to high levels of CF (Hinderer et.al, 2014). According to Bao Suping, in the article Compassion Fatigue and Psychological Capital in Nurses Working in Acute Care Settings, the prevalence of compassion fatigue is negatively impacting both the quality of caring for patients and nurses’ professional quality of life (Suping & Taliaferro, 2015). On the other hand, nurses might experience compassion satisfaction as a positive outcome from working with trauma patients. Compassion satisfaction is feeling a sense of accomplishment and reward as a result of caring for trauma patients. In those who had specialized training to work with trauma victim, compassion satisfaction may actually be more prevalent than BO and
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,