Friday, April 12, 2013
Linda A. Streit, RN, DSN1
Renice A. Washington, FNP-C/CNS2
Maria Hanik, MN, APRN-BC, OCN3
Melissa Morrison, RN, MSN, FNP-C3
Elizabeth Poirier, PharmD3
Azeroo Armaghan, PharmD, BCNSP3
Elizabeth Cunningham, MSW3
Amani Legagneur, MDiv3
(1)Georgia Baptist College of Nursing, Mercer University, Atlanta, GA
(2)Oncology Women's Services, Northside Hospitlal, Atlanta, GA
(3)Northside Hospital, Atlanta, GA
Learning Objective 1: Understand the relevance of compassion fatigue and the effects on members of the interdisciplinary health care team.
Learning Objective 2: Determine interventions which may assist in reducing compassion fatigue among members of the health care team.
Compassion fatigue, a term initially coined by Figley (1995), describes secondary trauma stress incurred by helping professionals working with survivors of natural disasters and terrorism. Figley (1995) included health care professionals in this definition, since these providers often deal with unrelenting suffering. A review of the literature reveals that compassion fatigue is often interchanged with the term burnout. Yoder (2010) differentiates compassion fatigue and burnout by yielding that compassion fatigue arises when one is unable to “rescue or save an individual from harm,” which leads to remorse. In comparison, burnout is thought to arise from failure to meet personal goals, which results in frustration (Yoder, 2010, p. 191). According to Landro (2012), compassion fatigue leads to decreased job satisfaction, decreased job productivity, higher job turnover rates, and cynicism in the nursing arena. All these factors can affect patient satisfaction and patient care outcomes.
While daily interventions are offered to provide support to patients and families, the effect of compassion fatigue upon caregivers can pose a threat to positive patient outcomes. While the literature provides support of the existence of compassion fatigue among select groups of healthcare providers, a paucity of research exists on the effect of compassion fatigue upon the entire team working with oncology patients. This presentation will provide information associated with the prevalence of compassion fatigue among members of the interdisciplinary healthcare team. Valid and reliable tools (ProQOL version 5) for measurement of compassion fatigue will be presented and reviewed, as well as the provision of successful interventions for reducing the presence of fatigue.
A healthy work environment requires that the manager and organization commit to recognizing factors that may affect the delivery of care. Caring for the caregiver(s) necessitates that managers seek measures to maintain healthy work environments.
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