Compassion Fatigue Research Paper

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).

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

We have talked about compassion fatigue last year in research. Compassion fatigue is when nurses or other health care professionals become indifferent to requests

1. Introduction Compassion fatigue experienced by doctors and nurse, the term is used to describe their emotionless and apathy to the patients. However, today, compassion fatigue appears everywhere, not only happens with healthy professionals but also with all the caregivers, and even to us and to any person. Compassion fatigue becomes more common in media. In fact, compassion fatigue has been called a form of burnout to describe ‘journalists’ secondary trauma in being routinely exposed to atrocities.

King 's Conceptual System Theory A primary concept of nearly all nursing theories is the belief that humans are the center of nursing care. No matter what setting nurses are practicing in, the goal is to optimize patient outcomes by holistically caring for patients, families, and their environments. Imogene King took this idea, divided in into three systems: personal system, interpersonal system, and social system, and related the systems to goal attainment and specific concepts. Three Systems of King’s Conceptual System

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.

As earlier mentioned, Lazarus and Folkman’s theory has three main concepts. Stress, cognitive appraisal and coping; on the stress concept, a major underpinning is the impact of stress on an individual which is based more on the individuals’ feeling of vulnerability, threat and ability to deal with the stressful situation or event. Compassion fatigue is a culmination of the effects of continuous and cumulative process that is caused by compassionate care to terminally ill patients and exposure to stress (Coetzee and Klopper, 2010). Utilizing the concept of stress as proposed by Lazarus and Folkman (1984), compassion fatigue nurse victims must make a determination of what should actually amount to

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,

Nursing theories have an impact on nursing practice as they

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. Compassion is ‘a desire to alleviate another person’s suffering’ as redefined by Lopez (2011) which is believed that people can train themselves to become more competent in (Lutz, Brefczynski-Lewis, Johnstone & Davidson, 2008). Dalai Lama (1995) originally suggested that compassion is achieved by deep commitment to relieve the suffering of another person (as cited in Gilbert, 2010a). Compassion focuses

The Habits of an Effective Nurse According to Stephen Covey, there are seven things a person must possess in order to be successful. In his novel The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People he addresses just that, ways to achieve success and effectiveness in all aspects of life. Often times, the word habit has a negative connotation; it is defined as a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up (Websters, 2014). The key words there are settled, regular, and practiced.

Providing care to a patient is a particularly challenging process that requires a great deal of effort from a nurse. A nurse’s ability to give quality care to their patient is an important aspect to a patient’s life both now and in the future. As such, nurses must exhibit specific qualities in their practice in order to maintain the best standard of care for their patients. Given this, I believe that the standards of knowledge, advocacy, and self-awareness are foundational to the nursing practice and to a nurse’s capacity to provide quality patient care. Knowledge

Imogene King is one of many influential women to make a lasting impact on nursing. The theory of goal attainment, a theory she created, is a middle-range theory that discusses the influence nurses and patients collectively have on goal setting. For anyone in the healthcare field, King’s theory is important in that it helps healthcare workers understand the way they should interact with patients; the theory also discusses individualized goals for the patient. Healthcare is always changing; however, one thing that has not changed is the notion of setting goals and evaluating the patient’s achievements. King “urged nursing professionals to focus on the organization of nursing knowledge, arguing that a theoretical body of knowledge was necessary

King interrelated the nurse and client relationship by incorporating communication through transaction to establish mutually set goals in care. The nurses transact in a multitude of environments with a goal focused on positive health outcomes. Human beings are the underlying focus of nursing care. Nursing care focuses on promoting, maintaining and restoring health, caring for those that are sick and caring for those who are dying while promoting dignity (Leo-Demare et al., 2015). Stress, roles, time, and space are factors that King focused on to initiate the attainment of goals.

(2014). The design of compassionate care. Journal Of Clinical Nursing,23(23/24), 3589-3599. doi:10.1111/jocn.12632 • The importance of having compassion in the health care field. • Compassion has a lack of attention because of the process and organizational structures that do not accompany it.