Compassion Fatigue in - Essay Example

Compassion Fatigue While research suggests that providers of disaster care are at risk for compassion fatigue, there is little comprehensionof the factors that place nurses at risk. A study was therefore undertaken to assess the risk for compassion fatigue in public health nurses who offered care to the victims of the 2004 hurricane. In this study, the statistical test that was put into use in order to answer the research question was the use of a survey. Survey studies are investigations in which self-report data are collected from samples with the purpose of describing populations on some variables of interest (Nieswiadomy, 2008).

In this case, a Compassion Fatigue Self-Test (CFST) consisting of thirty questions was administered to 500 public health nurses who could have been deployed to assist hurricane victims. These nurses were identified by the Florida State Department of Health (DOH). The commonest data collection methods used in survey research is questionnaires and interviews (Nieswiadomy, 2008). At first, the nurses were asked to go back in time and think of their hurricane experience and respond to the questionnaire based on those feelings.

Secondly, they were requested to answer the same questionnaire based on their current feelings. The second responses were printed on a different colored paper in order to distinguish it from the initial. The participants had to rate the questions on a scale of how often they experienced that feeling or event. In this case, the Likert scale was used (1=rarely, 10=very often). The range of possible scores of the thirty questions would automatically be 30 to 300. The scores obtained from each issue are then added up to give a total score of (range from 173) and the risk level of compassion fatigue.

NameWord Count: 288ReferencesNieswiadomy, R. M. (2012). Foundations of nursing research (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education