Combating Compassion Fatigue - Essay Example

COMBATING COMPASSION FATIGUE affiliation Combating Compassion Fatigue The practice of nursing patients and their families continues to expose nurses to deaths and profound losses. The problem however is that little has been done to deal with the reaction of these losses that they daily experience in their work. The care for the vulnerable, ill, traumatized and ill patients by nurses needs to take into account the effect that they sustain emotionally, physically and spiritually. While many nurses view their work as a calling, very few plan for the implications that come along discharging their duties. Compassion as an emotional feeling is fundamental in the practice of nursing. It ensures that the nurse associates with the feelings of the patients and that as the nurse cares for the person and their family, and they are moved to act with empathy. Compassion fatigue in this case of nursing describes a state of exhaustion with severe malaise that ensures form caring to patients and their significant others that experience different aspects of emotional spiritual and physical pain (Yoder, 2010). The cost nurses pay for caring for patients. When compassion fatigue is not addressed in the early phases, it results to burnout. However, several differences are notable between the two terms. The conflict in the work setting of the nurse serves as the impetus for burnout while interpersonal intensity and emotional engagement are the impetus for compassion fatigue. Most of the time if the nurse is unable to cope with compasses fatigue and therefore to show compassion while caring for the patient, guilt and distress may result. Consequently, failure to adopt proper coping strategies for burnout result into powerlessness, fatigue and frustrations. There are several etiologies and risk factor to compassion fatigue. These include the nurses who are first responders. These categories of nurses like the trauma and emergency nurses are more predisposed to first-hand strategies than others as they are at the front line of caring for these patients. These nurses are more predisposed because they daily have an obligation to meet patient needs on a “moment to moment “ basis and in a comprehensive manner. These makes these nurses have a strong empathically and emotional connection to these patients. This element of their work is made worse by a lack of formal support systems frequently to counter the squeal of negative feelings from their work (Coetzee & Klopper, 2010). The other risk factors are found in nurses whose personality easily identifies with the nursing profession. These nurses have a personal identity that correlates with their profession and as such associate the outcome of their work with their ability to connect to patients emotionally. These categories of nurses are closely associated with the nurses who work with the dying like in hospice care. These patients are continuously are disposed of to patients and families who continue to grieve for their dying. If these categories of nurses do not institute mechanisms to help them cope with these emotional and physical strains that offering care to these patients brings, then they are at risk of compassion fatigue. Another category of nurse that has a high risk of compassion fatigue is those working with critical patients who may take longer to recover. This includes nurses working in intensive care and medical-surgical nurses working with patients with conditions that take long care in hospitals. The reason that these nurses are at risk is based on the long stay of the patients. This time allows them to form strong emotional connections. In the event that the prognosis of this infections are poor and death ensues, the nurse is left with guilt and question of what went wrong which causes compassion fatigue (Hooper, Craig, Janvrin, Wetsel, & Reimels, 2010). To asses adequately compassion fatigue, several helper characteristics are needed. These include the affective state of the nurse. The appearance of the nurse becomes more emotional and stressful. The cognitive ability of individual nurses to process information is also an indicator of compassion fatigue. Nurses who find it difficult to process information regarding the death of their patients may be in early phases of compassion fatigue. The ego defensive mechanism and processes of the nurse is also a great tool for assessing compassion fatigue. Nurses who use denial as a defensive mechanism may be in early or progressive phase of compassion fatigue. The ideological beliefs and self-help capacities can also be used to assess compassion fatigue. Nurses who have beliefs associating the emotional connection of the nurse and the patient to the recovery of the patient have a high correlation of having compassion fatigue. Three tools have been developed so far to assess compassion fatigue. These include compassion fatigue scale, professional quality of life scale and secondary traumatic stress scale. The interventions that are needed for the management of compassion fatigue are multifaceted. These interventions include assessment of compassion fatigue, prevention and the minimization of consequences of compassion fatigue. The interventions can be related to the balance of work ad life, work settings and education programs. In relation to work and life balance, the ability to equip nurses to invest energy and time into self-nurturing enables them to care for others efficiently. The reason this intervention is workable is due to the perception of nurses. Most nurses see themselves as the caregivers, givers and nurturers. Nurses wait until an issue like backache arises for them to take action of their wellbeing. They rarely leave room for nurturing themselves and as such predispose themselves to burnout and compassion fatigue (Coetzee & Klopper, 2010). As these nurses continue to be emotionally predisposed to death and loss, they are made captive o response actions that are pathological. The use of good diet and exercise are essential in comparing fatigue using the balance of work and life activities. Another essential element is having nurses take compulsory leave that they are entitled to every year. Education interventions are equally important in comparing burnout and compassion fatigue. Education enlightens the nurse of the danger signs of compassion fatigue and burnout. Basic communication skills have been observed to be an effective means of preventing burnout and compassion fatigue. The basic nursing programs should include aspects of communication of the nurse and the patient as well as a nurse and other health workers. Communication in this sense allows the nurse to identify acceptable strategies of coping with stress and establish boundaries with the relationships that they developed with the patients. Education in communication strategies also empowers the nurse to develop coping mechanisms with the dilemmas and ethical conflicts that arise in their care giving. Continuous education programs and meeting with interdisciplinary members are modalities for developing these skills (Maiden, Georges, & Connelly, 2011). Finally, the interventions for dealing with burnout and compassion fatigue can be implemented in relation to the work setting of the nurse. Interventions that focus on work settings help in saving emotional breakdown reduce conflict in the job and reduce turnover of nurses due to burnout and fatigue. Some of the practices in work setting include onsite counselling (Yoder, 2010). An advanced nurse therapist, a counselor, or a social worker can do all this. These resources however must be easily available, acceptable and practical to the nurse. Creating sports group for nurses are also a strategy for dealing with fatigue in work setting. The groups offer peers support and guidance that helps address the emotional issues that most nurses underestimate. In addition to this, de-briefing sessions can also be used in the work setting to help counter fatigue. These sessions identify and offer the nurse with helpful and non-helpful clinical approaches that can be used by nurses to deal with grief. Attention to spiritual needs of nurses is a great way of dealing with compassion fatigue. The death and life issues that nurses face daily do trigger sadness, futility and sense of tragedy that relate to the spiritual sense of all human beings. Creation of opportunities for nurses to form spiritual associations in hospitals and holding prayer sessions at the end of shifts have been effectively used to offer spiritual morale to nurses (Hooper et al., 2010). Having hospital chaplain that deal with spiritual needs of nurses at their workstations. In conclusion, dealing with burnout and compassion fatigue requires spiritual, physical and emotional strategies. Trigger symptoms, preventive methods, self-treatment caregiver plans, effective self-soothing, containment skills, boundary setting and self-care planning together with other spiritual needs are effective examples of strategies. The holistic approach should consider the nurse as a person who also requires compassion in the duty discharge. Addressing compassion fatigue and burnout will influence retention of nurses who have high efficiency and effectiveness in their work. References Coetzee, S. K., & Klopper, H. C. (2010). Compassion fatigue within nursing practice: A concept analysis. Nursing & Health Sciences, 12(2), 235–243. Hooper, C., Craig, J., Janvrin, D. R., Wetsel, M. A., & Reimels, E. (2010). Compassion satisfaction, burnout, and compassion fatigue among emergency nurses compared with nurses in other selected inpatient specialties. Journal of Emergency Nursing, 36(5), 420– 427. Maiden, J., Georges, J. M., & Connelly, C. D. (2011). Moral distress, compassion fatigue, and perceptions about medication errors in certified critical care nurses. Dimensions of Critical Care Nursing, 30(6), 339–345. Yoder, E. A. (2010). Compassion fatigue in nurses. Applied Nursing Research, 23(4), 191–197. Read More