Compassion fatigue in helping professions: a scoping literature review

Summary & key facts

This scoping review looked at research on compassion fatigue in helping jobs like nursing, counselling, social work, and teaching. The authors found 43 articles and say compassion fatigue is a complex, hard-to-define idea that has been studied most in health care—especially nursing—and that different personal and work factors are linked to it. They conclude that one single model of compassion fatigue probably will not fit all helping professions and that more focused study is needed on other jobs, on predictors, and on whether the symptom measures are valid.

Key facts:

• The review included 43 articles that met the study’s inclusion and eligibility criteria.
• The authors searched electronic databases including ScienceDirect, PubMed, and Taylor & Francis and used the PRISMA-ScR method for analysis.
• Compassion fatigue is described in the paper as behaviors and emotions that come from learning about another person’s traumatic event and has been called a “cost of caring.”
• The term compassion fatigue was first used in 1992 in the health sector and was defined then as a “loss of the ability to nurture” in emergency nurses.
• Researchers often equate or replace the term compassion fatigue with Secondary Traumatic Disorder (STD) and burnout, making the concept less clear.
• Factors linked to compassion fatigue fall into two broad groups: personal factors (for example, resilience, burnout, moral courage, emotional control, mindfulness, work experience, professional competence, and professional efficacy) and wor
• Most research to date has focused on health workers—especially nurses—using experimental, cross-sectional, and literature-review methods; studies in education and in Southeast Asia are described as scarce.
• The authors state it is difficult to make a single conceptual model of compassion fatigue that fits all helping professions and call for further analysis of aspects, determinants, and the validity of compassion fatigue symptoms.

Abstract

Further analysis is needed in developing a conceptual analysis of compassion fatigue that focuses on other fields of work more specifically and comprehensively by paying attention to, aspects, determinants, and validity of compassion fatigue symptoms.

Topics

Healthcare professionals’ stress and burnout Optimism, Hope, and Well-being Resilience and Mental Health

Categories

General Health Professions Health Professions Health Sciences

Tags

Applied psychology Burnout Clinical psychology Compassion Compassion fatigue Competence (human resources) Courage Economic growth Economics Empathy Health care Law MEDLINE Mindfulness Philosophy Political science Psychological resilience Psychology Psychotherapist Social psychology Systematic review Theology