Compassion Fatigue In Health Care

What was once thought of as a profession driven by compassion and the desire to help those in need has now become filled with weary burnt out nurses who have lost sight of their purpose. Stress has caused them to distance themselves from the principles nursing is built upon. Our health care system needs to be revamped to improve the quality of care being administered. Nurses can be proactive and take steps to avoid burning out but, our health care administrators have to take matters into their hands because they have the capacity to initiate change. They must realize the gravity of the situation and take an offensive position to make a stand against the crisis of nursing

The most dominant characteristic overall that being a nurse requires is resilience. Nurses must resist the symptoms of stress and be able to quickly recover from difficult situations. A study in the book Support for Caring and Resiliency Among Successful Nurse Leaders, supports the practice of self-care, responsibility, and reflection to increase resilience (Dyess, Prestia, and Smith 108-110). Self-care involves attending to self-cues by listening to the body to maintain balance. For instance, having a job in the health department can seem never-ending, and as a result pushes clinicians to continue working until the job is finished, despite how tired and possibly burnt out he or she is. This method neglects attention to the clinician’s physical and emotional health. Instead, one should establish boundaries, such as knowing when to take a break from work and when to go home and rest (Dyess, Prestia, and Smith 109-110). Self-care also includes involvement outside the workforce, such as relationships with friends and family, spiritual health, and having relaxation (McAllister and Lowe 117-127). Following self-care, though equally as important, is

This paper 's intention is to apply Compassion-Focused Therapy to the case study of Laura and will outline how Compassion Focused Therapy clarifies the case of Laura as well as outlining the methods used in Compassion-Focused therapy. The essay will finally evaluate how effective Compassion Focused Therapy is when understanding the case of Laura.

Strategic planning for retention of nursing staff using SWOT analysis. Strengths and weaknesses are often internal to organization, while opportunities and threats generally relate to external factors. For this reason, SWOT is sometimes called Internal-External Analysis and the SWOT Matrix is sometimes called an IE Matrix.

When counselors experience burnout, they experience a multitude of symptoms such as anxiety, fatigue or exhaustion. To decrease burnout, counselors can talk to their supervisors, exercise, eat healthy meals and receive an adequate amount of sleep. Compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma are similar, but they also are different. For instance, in both compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma counselors are exposed to their clients’ trauma. Another similarity of compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma is that both symptoms are similar to the symptoms of PTSD. On the other hand, the difference between compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma is that the effects of compassion fatigue are immediate and intense, whereas the effects of vicarious trauma occur over time. In order for counselors determine the severity of burnout, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma; counselors can take four assessments: The Traumatic Stress Institute Belief Scale, the Compassion Fatigue Self-Test and Intimacy Assessment, the Professional Quality of Life Scale, and the Maslach Burnout

In 1984, Andrew Jameton defined “moral distress” as a phenomenon in which one knows the right action to take, but is constrained from taking it.1There are many causes of moral distress causes and how it is manifested and it can lead to low morale among staff and in some instances can cause employees to quit their job or change their careers. Moral distress has been identified among nearly all healthcare professionals, but most studies have focused on nursing, as it was first recognized among nurses. Moral distress occurs when the healthcare professional comes across a situation where they are forced to choose between what the healthcare provider is best for the patient, but that conflicts with the healthcare organization, the

I wish a Mack truck would hit me on the way work today” my friend

The Compassion in Practice was introduced in December 2012 to a wide range of healthcare professionals to use, it tells you the 6 values to be used to provide the essential care. The values are: care (looking after someone and giving the appropriate care), compassion (where you’re aware of the needs of others and to eagerly give help), competence (ability to use expertise to give the right care), communication (exchange of info), courage (the strength to do the right thing when someone wrong is going on), and commitment (willingness to help

In the nursing home, the nurse to patient ratio average 1 to 25 patients. The nurse to patient in the hospital averages 1 to 5 or 6 patients. The amount of orders each patient has and that needs to get done makes work seem endless. In the article called Prevalence of Burnout Syndrome in Emergency Nurses: A Meta-Analysis, the authors, Gómez-Urquiza et al. (2017) mentions the effects of nursing burnouts on the patients. When nurses suffer from these burnouts, it does not only affect themselves and their family, but it follows them to their working environment. It is affecting their coworkers and the patients. This leads to poor quality of care for the patients, increase patient falls, medication errors, increase in hospital acquired infections, and other factors that affect patient care (Gómez-Urquiza, et al.,

Nursing is the profession that never leaves the patient from admission to discharge. Due to the high emotional and physical demands of the job, burnout or nursing fatigue is prevalent in the profession. Burnout is a well-studied problem; however, there are very little changes done to prevent fatigue in health care. Nursing fatigue is an interplay of individual, organizational and systematic factors that negatively affect not only the health of the nurse but also patient safety. For the purpose of this paper, I will focus on the external challenges in the organizational level that might affect new nurses in their first year of practice such as heavy workload, lack of support and poor leadership style.

In order to define caring in nursing, one must consider the various aspects of caring, and how nurses can use these aspects to build therapeutic relationships with their clients. After these aspects have been understood, nurses can use the ethics of care to influence decisions regarding clients. Challenges to caring do exist for nurses, and solutions to the challenges can be discovered through the ethics of care. There are strategies a nurse may use in order to guarantee quality care for both clients and their families.

As part of my studies of the Perspectives on nursing module I have been assigned to examine dignity as a value which underpins nursing practice. Dignity is a multi-faceted concept and can be defined as ‘’ The state or quality of being worthy of honour or respect’ (https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/dignity, 2015)’. Respect for the dignity of the person is the number one principle of the Code of Professional Conduct and Ethics for Registered Nurses and Midwives (NMBI, 2014). Also, this principle notably finds its origins in the Universal Declaration of human rights (United Nations, 1948) (Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland, 2014). Throughout this piece I will emphasize how this principle interacts with nursing

Research suggests that there are contributing factors that may increase the possibility that certain people may be at a higher risk for compassion fatigue because of personal trauma, or professionals who have poor self-care practices, and people with lack of job satisfaction. In addition, it is important to know the difference between burnout and compassion fatigue because they share similar symptoms and often overlap. “Some research indicates that job burnout and compassion fatigue (i.e., secondary trauma) are separate contributors to psychological distress. Burnout is not limited to those who work with the traumatized and tends to occur over a prolonged period of time” (Harr & Moore, 2011,

When I think about moral distress, I think about the common phrase in the nursing world, that is, “nurses eating their young”. My friend Nia who is fresh out of nursing school and landed her first nursing job working in the ICU. Nia is of a Russian decent, and English is her second language. She has a strong accent, and sometimes she has trouble pronouncing some English words. She told me at work her nursing supervisor would make fun of the way she spoke and even called her a nickname in front of the other nurses. Nia felt embarrassed by her supervisor’s remarks. She was starting to lose confidence in herself, but also the confidence she had when speaking to her patients.

Compassion is the emotion that one feels in response to the suffering of others that motivates a desire to help (Sherlyn Jimenez, ), whereas the term ‘Benevolent’ has come from Latin, where “bene” means ‘well’ and “volent”, a verb which means ‘to wish’, the word itself brings goodness with it. Therefore, benevolence must incorporate compassion. Compassion has not only deep religious connotations, but it also refers to showing concern for the suffering or welfare of others, and shows mercy to others. The feeling of compassion is evident when leaders make an effort to understand the needs of their employees and take steps to address those needs and concerns in organisation (Cooper Brian, Santora, Sarros, J, 2007).The person practicing benevolence are large hearted and kind enough to help others. Until and unless we consider things from other’s point of view, we will never be able to understand a person’s opinion and his/her perceptions (Cooper, K, Brian.Santora, C, Joseph and Sarros, C.James, 2007).