Compassion Fatigue and the Specialties Most Affected
By Tiffany Aller, contributor
Nurses in many specialties are at risk for suffering compassion fatigue — becoming indifferent to patient's ailments because of having witnessed pain and suffering over a period of time. So what is compassion fatigue and what can be done to prevent and/or treat it?
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Compassion Fatigue and High Pressure Specialties
In simplest terms: compassion fatigue is mostly experienced by those helping people in distress. The helper becomes extremely tense and preoccupied with the suffering of those being helped to the degree that it can create a secondary traumatic stress for the helper.
Certain medical specialties bring nurses (helpers) into greater contact with the patient’s families because of the difficulty of the diagnoses and treatments or the age of the patients. That can increase the likelihood of compassion fatigue.
Nick Angelis, the author of How to Succeed in Anesthesia School (and RN, PA, or Med School)explains that oncology and pediatric environments are ripe compassion fatigue examples. This is caused not only by the tough diagnoses patients and nurses may encounter but also the higher likelihood of consistent interactions with both the patients and their families.
Angelis explains, nurses are prone to compassion fatigue because they “have to care but can’t really be authentic.” Nurses, by necessity, must shield their own emotions from their patients and patients’ families, which can lead to feelings of inauthenticity. And constantly masking your feelings can eventually lead to an actual lack of emotions about the situation.
Reacting to Compassion Fatigue
In these high-stress or distressing outcome environments, Angelis suggests compassion fatigue treatment strategies beginning with compartmentalization so long as nurses leave space to examine their own feelings objectively. Being truthful with yourself can help with the “ambivalent feelings [you] must process to empathize with patients and make ethical decisions.”
Dawn E. McMeekin, RN, DNP, CNE suggests in a study on the stress suffered by critical care nursing that “finding ways to minimize distress and improve resiliency not only helps the individual nurse but may also help combat high turnover and vacancy rates for critical care nurses.”
That means that institutions and individual nurses should work together to acknowledge when environments are prone to causing compassion fatigue and finding viable responses to help nurses cope.
Whether you currently work in a specialty that routinely leads nurses to feel compassion fatigue or are considering a new assignment in such a specialty, learning to recognize occurrences, react with self-empathy and honesty and work toward overcoming this outcome can make you more effective in your assignments.
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