Compassionate Fatigue Case Study

Furthermore, nursing burnout has costly effects on an organization, causing poor retention rates, reduced productivity, increased absenteeism, difficulty recruiting, and high turnover rates, along with increased medical errors and reduced quality

the higher the burnout level among critical care nurse the poor quality care provided which

begins by defining “compassion fatigue” from Figley (1995. p.7) as the behaviors and emotions resulting from knowing about a traumatic event experienced by someone else and the resulting stress from wanting to or helping this person. Compassion fatigue is further distinguished from “burnout” by stating that it involves higher levels of helplessness and isolation from a support network than burnout.

The strains on the healthcare field can eventually lead to physical,mental and emotional exhaustion also known as burnout. As caretakers,educators,and lifelines, nurses are responsible for the many roles they carry as they continue to give care to patients day in and day out. One of the most common reasons nurses are stressed is the patient to nurse ratio. For instance, a nurse may be taking care of 6 patients when he or she should only be taking care of 4.

Burnout is classified viewed in three phases. The first phase of burnout is the arousal phase. The nurse shows anxiety, insomnia, forgetfulness, inability to concentrate, feelings of beings overwhelmed, frustration, sadness, and new physical symptoms, such as headaches and stomach problems. If the nurse does not recognize that these symptoms require intervention, the second phase is energy conservation. In this phase, the nurse starts to call in sick to work; o she may be chronically late getting to duty. Deadlines are not met, a cynical or resentful attitude develops, a persistent sense of fatigue pervades both are the nurse’s personal and professional’s life.

There are many factors that contribute to patient outcomes. If nurses and healthcare providers are experiencing patient burnout, how will that affect patient outcomes? We all know where this is going. Patient burnout may cause patient outcomes to be poor.

Burnout affects many of the nurses these days. There are many factors that contribute to a burnout. Sometimes people do not even realize that they are heading towards a burnout. In this research paper it talks about the negative consequences of a burnout in nursing. For example, it can lead to a decreased immune system that will make the body vulnerable to colds and flus (Smith, M., Segal, J., Robinson, L., & Segal, R. June, 2016). It also talks about the risk factors like the age and their gender because these associate with burnout. Another one that will be mentioned is recommendations for burnout nurses. This includes eating a healthy diet, exercising, seeking support, reevaluating priorities, and changing the way people look

Direct care staff often look to their direct supervisors or the organization itself for support to prevent burnout. The staff’s direct supervisor needs to be aware of the individuals employees stress level. This can be done my spending time with the individual while working directly with individuals and also listening and paying attention to what the staff member is saying. Many human service organizations offer very generous paid time off packages to their employees so that the employees have the opportunity to take time off for themselves or their families. While the paid time off package is nice the organizations need to look at other options as well to keep valuable employees and reduce burnout.

Monday October 26th: Today at Moses Cone hospital, I was in the role of student nurse. I had two patients; one a returning patient, and the other a new patient. The nurse I was working with is someone I have never worked with before or even seen on the floor, but she seemed to be familiar with the unit.

Palliative care continues to evolve in providing better end-of-life care and so does nursing care. Thus, nursing practice is enhanced to satisfy the demand of the palliative care. A nurse provides complex care and fulfils the needs of the patients. Nursing involves in caring work, which focus on patient experiencing agony in palliative and haematological cancer care. Nurses worked in a taxing environment, that can be highly stressful, and often they experience physical, psychological and spiritual exhaustion. This nature of work can have devastating effects on the health and wellbeing of a nurse. There are three concepts related to adverse consequences of caring work: these are compassion fatigue, burnout and vicarious traumatization.

My concept is compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue (CF) as it relates to nurses working in an emergency department dealing with secondary trauma causing symptoms of compassion fatigue. The measurement tool, which I will use, is the Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) scale. This scale has been in use since 1995 and has had several revisions, the last one updated in 2010 and it has been translated into 17 languages. The ProQOL measures compassion satisfaction (CS) and CF and its subcategories, burnout (BO) and secondary traumatic stress (STS). It is a pencil and paper Likert scale with 30 questions with 10 questions each reflecting CS, BO and STS. It was used by Potter, Deshields and Rodrigues (2013) in a pre-post test to establish if the resiliency program was successful and it was used more recently by Hunsaker, et al (2015) and Flarity, Holcomb and Gentry (2015) to measure the prevalence of compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue among emergency room nurses and pre/post test to measure whether the intervention of a resiliency program had an impact on the nurses, respectively. The scale is readily available and easy to use and easy to self-score.

Vital incidents, care of devastating ill patients, sudden death in the hospitals or health facilities caring out day-to-day duties, and a physical or psychological threat to the safety of a human being could cause moral distress and compassion fatigue. Accordingly, to stayers or fighters these events negatively could impact their well-being and cause longer recovery time than they can control as a routine. Events with strong emotions can aggravate stress among nurses or staff and block their skills to deliver good care (Healy & Tyrrell, 2012). For example, two years ago lethal incident happened in one dialysis facility where one of the technicians consciously ignored one of the patients with hypotension and aggravate state to cardiac arrest. Patient was transported to the hospital where three hours later he went into his second cardiac arrest and died. The accident was reported by clinic manager to the company Human Resources department and all

Burnout is one of the factors that may affect employees’ efficiency, a group connections, motivation and general emotional wellbeing of workers in the working environment. The idea of burnout was separately presented by Herbert Freudenberger in 1974 and Christina Maslach in 1976. The term was used to portray the mental condition of health care volunteers who were indicating such side effects as emotional depletion and loss of inspiration (Freudenberger, 1974, 1975; Maslach, 1976). Burnout is characterized as a psychological syndrome of an emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and a decreased level of individual accomplishment (Schaufeli, Maslach, and Marek 1993).

amplify their tolerance because next threatening events emphasise inoculation need to keep covered among nursing curricular or staff improvement programmes However in imitation of avoiding ‘ reproof the victim’, the nurse who succumbs in imitation of burnout because, over boisterous environmental stressors, emphasis inoculation ought to stay united along organizational strategies in imitation of civilizing high-quality deed condition. A study was done to investigate the relationship between personality traits, perception of workplace stress and coping among intensive care unit (ICU) nurses A convenience sample of critical care nurses (n=46) completed three standardized questionnaires during September 2007: the revised NEO personality inventory