Despite the challenges of treating ailing people, every morning healthcare practitioners all over the world wake up to support people in pain. They console bereaved families, hold hands of the dying, they stretch themselves both physically and emotionally in situations of chaos. Nevertheless, though they are constantly showering patients with infinite amounts of empathy, their emotional state tends to be left on the periphery. Compassion fatigue is a silent thief that is not discussed or checked and it is gathering momentum, sapping the joy and resilience of the very people that it is supposed to help.
In emergency rooms, pressure is directed to nurses and other care givers to COVID-19 teams. Compassion fatigue, a syndrome in which an individual develops an emotional exhaustion as a result of prolonged exposure to other people’s trauma is more common than ever and more misunderstood than it ever ought to be.
Learn more about the appearance and impact of compassion burnout on the minds and hearts of the care providers.
In this article, we dive into what gives rise to compassion fatigue in health care, we hear the voices of victims of compassion fatigue, and we delineate ways to practice cultures that nurture caregivers.
What is Compassion Fatigue?
Comp citation is not burnout, but the two are very closely related It is a given form of emotional fatigue that comes out of taking care of troubled individuals. Unlike other fatigue in the workplace, compassion fatigue is synonymous with empathy. Quite often it was an issue of an employee seeing a lot of trauma, suffering or die including:
- Emergency room nurses and physicians
- ICU staff knows as the “Intensive care unit”.
- Mental health counsellors
- Hospice workers
- Paramedics
- Pandemic frontline responders
Emotional response to such jobs is necessary on a continuous level and with time such emotional involvement may cause numbness, a feeling of detaching and even guilt due to the inability to do better.
With time emotional presence demanded in these jobs may make one numb, detached and may even make him or her feel guilty that he/she cannot do more.
Signs and Symptoms of Compassion Fatigue
The healthcare workers are not always quick to realize that they are inept of behind a compassion fatigue. The symptoms are so subtle and get worse with time when left unattended. Classic symptoms are:
- Too much emotional drainage.
- Indifferent or apathy toward patients.
- Anger or annoyance towards minor problems.
- Sleep nightmares and disturbances.
- Less power to feel satisfaction or empathy.
- Feelings of helplessness or hopelessness.
- Physical outcomes such as gastrointestinal or headaches issues.
- Withdrawal from friends, colleagues and families.
Compassion fatigue, in turn, when not addressed, may cause the loss of performance at work, jeopardize personal relationships, and result in chronic mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety.
The High Risk Zones: Emergency and Crisis Care
In some healthcare environments, there is little to stop the occurrence of compassion fatigue. These include:
- Emergency Departments (EDs)
In this case, health care staff is exposed to non-stop trauma: car accidents, gunshots, heart attacks. Not much time is taken between handling one crisis and the other coming. Compassion is transformed into a shooting response instead of a strong soul emotion, which adds to the emotions to be worn out.
- Pandemic Response Units
Workers in times of outbreaks such as COVID-19 or Ebola have to work under a high death rate, a shortage of possibilities, ethical considerations and work long shifts. They also feel were not allowed to associate with members of their families in order to avoid endangering them which inflicts additional emotional pressure.
- Palliative and Hospital Care
Terminally ill patients need to be handled on an emotional basis at all times. Seeing deterioration and death on a regular basis, and taking care of the bereaved families, takes its toll on the heart and mind of the care givers cumulatively.
Real Stories: Behind the White Coats
DR. Nneka, Emergency Physician
“I had ten patients die in a week in the middle of the COVID-19. I don’t remember the names of their kids in mind. Way how it looked just compartmentalising of bodies. I would get between division between cases and yell at nurses. That never would have been mine. I had no energy left and I later found out, of course, I had no idea about it at the time.”
Kofi, ICU Nurse in Ghana
“When it becomes part of your daily work, when you deal with dying patients, then there comes a numbing feeling inside you. I used to discuss the issues with families and give them confidence. Now, I only nod and walk away. It does not happen that I do not care, but it is because I care too much.”
These voices resonate with the silent frustrations of most healthcare workers, who may struggle with their issues out of engagements and under the pretence of being professional.
Institutional Impact of Compassion Fatigue
Compassion fatigue is expensive in more ways than just for the health of an individual. At organizational level, it brings:
- Increase in absenteeism
- Poor team cohesion
- High staff turnover
- Poor patient outcomes and medical errors
- Legalised liability due to ethical oversights or mistakes
The health care system that neglects the emotional state of employees is bound to fail, to collapse under such internal dysfunction; at least, in the highly stressful health care industry.
Barriers to Addressing Compassion Fatigue
The extent of the compassion fatigue issue notwithstanding, however, it has not received the appropriate attention it deserves because:
🔒 Stigma and Shame
Medical practitioners are supposed to be tough. It is considered a sign of weakness to reveal that one is emotionally drained. People are very silent to keep up with being judged or considered incompetent.
🚫 Lack of Training
medical curricula do not give the students ways of dealing emotionally with patient suffering. It is not built in terms of emotional resilience, but there is an assumption that there was emotional resilience in the first place.
❌ Inadequate Support Systems
Hospitals might not have mental health days, counsellors, or programs that help to surround a patient to peer support. The support being proffered is more like being reactive.
Strategies for Building Resilience and Reducing Fatigue
It’s not possible to get rid of compassion fatigue altogether but it can be minimised. Institutions should take it upon themselves to establish settings that safeguard the emotional well-being of the caregivers.
- Normalize Emotional
Traumatic or emotionally powering transformations should involve the occurrence of a structured and short debriefing among teams. The sessions will enable employees to express themselves, unload, and avert accumulation of the emotions.
“Simple Model: The stop, drop and feel technique is not to judge but to stop, drop the performance masks and feel.”
- Provide Onsite Counselling and Peer Support
Presence of licensed therapists or trained peer supporters in person or online in a virtual environment will facilitate the early intervention. Peer-led mental health groups can be deployed to help lower the rate of stigma, as well as providing a safe place in which to self-reflect.
“Best Practice: On a monthly basis, hospitals are able to organize 30-minute mental health visit in privacy as they do with physical health screening.”
- Incorporate Compassion Fatigue Education in Training
Compassion fatigue should be taught in medical schools, nursing colleges and allied training institutions as one of the core programs.
Topics may include:
- Boundary setting
- Emotional well being
- Empathy without over identification
- Work life balance and self care techniques
- Identifying early warning sighs
Such preventive strategy develops emotional literacy in advance of a crisis.
- Promote a Culture of Self Care
Promote employees to sleep more, eat, and practice their leisure and nonworking hours. This can be supported by the institutions by:
- Establishing room that are silent proof for short breaks
- Celebration of employee well being milestones
- Enforcing customizable scheduling when possible
- Providing subsidized awareness programs such as; meditation, yoga and art therapy
If the leader has self care, you can be sure that’s what the team is going to do.
- Monitor Workload and Staffing Ratios
Compassion fatigue also occurs faster when there is too much work. Hospitals will be required to monitor patient-to-staff ratio and good work disintegration.
Technology Tip: Use AI to schedule the distribution of high-stress assignments effectively and not give the same personnel excessive amounts of time to work.
- Reward Empathy and Emotional Intelligence
Systems are also awarding nothing but fast pace and productivity too much. Empathy, collaboration, and resilience should be rewarded by the institutions in terms of performance review and promotions.
Rewards increase morale and the emotional labour that results in a sense of accomplishment is bought by rewards.
Global Models of Compassion Fatigue Prevention
Australia – The Schwartz Round
In hospitals, there are monthly sessions when staff members are allowed to express personal emotions without reaching any conclusion. It helps the team build and enhance emotional states.
United Kingdom – NHS Mental Hubs
The mental health hubs on offer provide free and confidential help to all members of the NHS. Their services include the recovery of trauma, stress coaching, and therapy.
Canada – Resilient Healthcare Model
Incorporates web-based and face to face training to develop emotional resilience in all hospital settings. The field of systematic change and peer mentoring is of concern to Is.
Compassion for the Compassionate: A Shift in Values
Clinical health is also a human process. Organizations should abandon their mentality that regards employees as output machines and institute their perceptions by acknowledging that individuals are entire personalities.
A fact that we must consider, is compassion fatigue, and the cost of care. When we require healthcare who have to give all the time, we also need to donate back- to them and their psyches, hearts and souls.
Conclusion: Healing the Healers
Promoter behind every good treatment, operation, or healing process stands a healthcare worker, a person who listens, calms, bears the burden of emotions of the other. Yet, they are human beings as well. He bleeds sympathy and gets devastatingly quiet when he has no fill.
Compassion fatigue prevention is not only the matter of professionals but is a safeguard of the very soul in healthcare. Increasingly, institutions require to inhabit the effect cluster into the emotional resilient-based universe, this is not optional rather a choice.
