Compassion Fatigue: A Case Study

Most nurses enter the field of nursing with a duty to compassionately care for the sick, wounded and weak patients in their charge. However, emphatic and caring nurses can become victims of the continuing stress of meeting the often overwhelming needs of patients and their families resulting in compassion fatigue (Kim, 2013). Boyle (2011) defines compassion fatigue as contemporary label affixed to the concept of personal vicarious exposure to trauma on a regular basis. For health professionals, compassion fatigue arises when providers have close interpersonal contact with a suffering patient and their emotional boundaries become blurred to the point that the caregiver unconsciously assimilates the distress experienced by the patient (Bush, 2009). Nurses are particularly vulnerable to compassion fatigue. They often enter the lives of others at very critical junctures and become partners, rather than observers, in patients' healthcare journeys. Acute care nurses in particular often develop empathic engagement with patients and families (Boyle, 2011). They are also frequently involved in existential issues surrounding life and death. Yet the consequences of caring work,
According to Stamm (2010), helping others produced both positive and negative impact in the lives of a helping professional. Those who have been exposes to traumatic stressors are at risk of developing negative symptoms like depression, compassion fatigue and burnout. On the other hand, compassion satisfaction is about the pleasure that a person derived from being able to do his or her work well. In fact, Figley and Stamm (1996) noted that the key to preventing compassion fatigue is that, an individual should detect and reinforce the sense of satisfaction they derived from working with other people. In addition, to remain effective and vital in their work, an individual must be able to recognize and find joy in their ability to help