Engage In Other Interests
Other interests give you the opportunity to meet other individuals who arent coworkers. This will give you a reprieve from your day to day stresses.
Compassion fatigue may cause a feeling of incompetency.
Participating in other activities increases your self-esteem by showing you the progress youre making from time to time. This will keep your spirits up even when youre back at work.
When you have other interests and hobbies, you increase you scope of knowledge. This will enable you to avoid overanalyzing the aspects of your job.
You will have more than one thing to focus on, thus relieving stress.
These activities may also take away the feeling of hopelessness that comes with compassion fatigue. By engaging in something interesting, chances are youll start feeling relevant.
Hobbies and other activities also rejuvenate your spirits as theyre fun and active.
Connect To A Bigger Picture
Human connection is important. But empathy burnout can cause you to lose sight of how you connect to others and to the work that you do.
Re-establish your connection by volunteering, making new friends, or doing some continuing education. Rediscovering why you do what you do can reignite the passion for doing it.
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Schedule Mental Health Hours
All people providing care or love to people who are struggling should schedule mental health hours each day. That doesnt always mean seeing a therapist. However, doing something at least one hour a day that is for your brain.
You might find relaxing activities that silence the thoughts. Maybe reading makes your mind wander, so instead you and your partner play a board game together. Or you watch a hilarious new comedy on a streaming service. You could try meditation, yoga, exercise, or anything that helps you turn off that inner critic and brings you to your inner peace.
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Stay Focused On Meeting Your Goals
When you become too focused on those youre helping, you may lose sight of your goals. One way to navigate this is to remind yourself of other areas of your life where you have goals and work towards them in small ways when you can. Having something exciting to look forward to in your life may also keep you on track in your career.
Engage In Outside Hobbies
Maintaining a solid work-life balance can help protect you from compassion fatigue. When all your time is spent working or thinking about work, it can be easy to burn out. Studies have shown work-life balance is becoming more important to workers, and making time for leisure activities and personal hobbies outside of work can help lower stress levels and improve overall life satisfaction.
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Take A Break When You Need It
Needing a break can be normal. Even if you love your job, it may become a point of stress and fatigue over time. Whenever your job becomes too much for you, find out how to break away and recharge.
If you are busy or cant find time to care for yourself, mindfulness and meditation can be done on the go as well. Studies show that regular meditation can increase your self-compassion.
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How To Deal With Compassion Fatigue
Many people find meaning and fulfillment in helping others and offering compassion to those in need. But at the same time, caring for others is a deeply emotional and resource-demanding process because you are exposed to other peoples trauma. The more you open yourself up to others pain, the more likely youll come to share victims feelings, and that may begin to take a toll on you.
Its human nature to feel guilty when youre not feeling as sad as you think you should about another persons situation, so you shouldnt beat yourself up about it. But you should remember that compassion fatigue can be a clear sign that youre not taking care of your own mental and physical health.
So what should you do when showing compassion to others feels like a burden? When you recognize that youre experiencing compassion fatigue, you should take steps to work through it. There are effective strategies that will help you cope with compassion fatigue, develop resilience, and build strength.
Is Compassion Fatigue The Same As Burnout
Some people may think of this as a form of burnout, but its not the same.
Burnout, by definition, is physical and emotional exhaustion. It can be because of your schedule, workload, toxic working environment, and such. It doesnt specifically revolve around someone elses traumatic experience.
With burnout, everyone, no matter what industry they are in, can experience it. However, burnout can be resolved by changing the nature of your work.
Now, what causes compassion fatigue is when the person helping becomes too involved in saving their patients that it starts to interfere with their own emotions.
Being in constant exposure to patients experiencing trauma can also impact the caregivers physical and mental health. It is where a caregiver experiences signs of compassion fatigue, such as physical and psychological exhaustion.
That is why its vital to be aware of the different signs of compassion fatigue. This way, you will know how you can start treating compassion fatigue.
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Anger And Hatred Towards The Cause Or Perpetrators
When you work on cases where, for example, a child experiences extreme abuse, its normal to feel anger at the person who did it.
However, if anger becomes too much that it fills your heart with hate, and your work, judgments, and thoughts are affected, this is one of the signs of compassion fatigue.
Personal Trauma And Grief
Trauma and grief counseling can be particularly difficult for therapists, draining their emotional resources. Feelings are heightened further when grief counseling is associated with the death of a child, increasing the therapists sense of empathy and commitment .
Therapists should ensure that they do not use such settings to work through experiences from their own past, which could result in a loss of objectivity, over-identification with clients, and depression.
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Resources: What Is Compassion Fatigue In Nursing
The following links are useful resources for nurses and individuals who know nurses at risk of compassion fatigue to learn more about the condition:
- Compassion Fatigue: How to Know If You Have It and How to Support Team Members, Nursing Standard: This resource discusses how the emotional and physical toll of caring reduces a nurses ability to empathize.
Find Your Own Source Of Empathy
People who experience compassion fatigue often feel as if they give more support to others than they receive. So you should seek out someone who can provide you with care and understanding in a way that meets your needs. Try to reach out to the people in your life who empathize with you because it can help you feel more emotionally available.
That means you should find a person wholl serve as an empathetic listener. You can share your concerns with a member of your family, a close friend, or a licensed therapist. That will help you recharge emotionally and relieve the weight of compassion fatigue.
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You Should Practice Self
Showing empathy and love for other people and helping them is heroic, but remember that you are also human.
These jobs are demanding, and sometimes, we forget that you, too, need compassion and assistance. Like a sponge, you absorb the persons hurt, sadness, and emptiness, and you end up exhausted.
You deserve the compassion and love youre giving, and dont forget to give that to yourself.
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How do these two articles support the nurse practice issue you chose?
Each of the two articles provides insight to the issue of compassion fatigue, which has become a key issue of concern in the nursing practice today. I intend to use the two articles to gain more insight on the implications that compassion fatigue is having when providing critical care. The articles will also provide me with information on some of the coping strategies that nurses would use as part of minimizing their exposure to compassion fatigue, which affects their ability to function in an effective way. The articles examine clear-cut recommendations in dealing with compassion fatigue as one of the ways to improve service delivery.
Method of Study
Results of Study
In the first article, Kapoulitsas & Corcoran find that a significant majority of social workers often find themselves dealing with high possibilities of compassion fatigue without an understanding of how this is impacting their performance. The study also found there was need for adoption of strong support systems as part of health service delivery as a way of ensuring that these social workers are able to cope with the challenges that they are facing as part of their service delivery efforts.
Ethical Considerations
References
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Tests Scales Checklists & Questionnaires
Those in helping professions often consciously or unconsciously share the emotional burden of their traumatized clients as they encourage the healing process. As a result, it is easy to become overwhelmed and numb through secondary traumatic stress .
For mental health professionals, it can be helpful to use questionnaires and tests to provide a more objective score of the degree of compassion fatigue currently being experienced.
When Compassion Fatigue Feels Severe: Getting Help
If your mental health begins declining or you experience a mental health condition, such as anxiety, depression, or substance use disorder, self-care may not feel like enough.
A therapist may help you find an effective treatment plan for your compassion fatigue. If you arent experiencing a mental health concern, a therapist may help you manage or prevent compassion fatigue and restore compassion satisfaction.
In therapy, you can find helpful, healthy self-care strategies, tools to manage work stress and a busy schedule, and ways to develop self-compassion and handle self-doubt.
If youve experienced a traumatic event or have experienced secondary trauma through your clients or patients, a therapist can help you with healthy coping strategies. If CF is taking a significant toll on you, one way to take care of it is by visiting a therapist in person or online.
Many busy professionals opt to try online counseling due to its ease of use. Not having to drive to another appointment may allow you more time to relax and care for yourself at home. Additionally, studies have shown that online cognitive behavioral therapy is effective in treating the symptoms of anxiety and depression. Another review of 17 studies about online counseling found that it is more cost-effective than in-person treatments.
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Watch For These Symptoms Of Compassion Fatigue
The sooner you notice signs of compassion fatigue, the sooner you can care for yourself and replenish your stores of empathy. Be on the lookout for:
- Feeling exhausted physically and psychologically
- Feeling helpless, hopeless or powerless
- Feeling irritable, angry, sad or numb
- A sense of being detached or having decreased pleasure in activities
- Ruminating about the suffering of others and feeling anger towards the events or people causing the suffering
- Blaming yourself and having thoughts of not having done enough to help the people who are suffering
- A decreased sense of personal and professional accomplishment
- A change in your worldview or spirituality
- Physical symptoms, including sleep and appetite disturbances, nausea and dizziness
Placebo Effect In Psychology
Contrasted to different work stressors there are things that occur outside of work that can affect the rate and experience of burnout and/or compassion fatigue. Stressors found by Killian and C.S. Warren et al. can be also attributed to personal stressors as well. Some of these stressors are beliefs of how much one has influence over a situation , family life and other relationships, financial hardships, and use of social support systems. Eastwood and Ecklund explored different coping skills and discussed the use of negative, or non-beneficial coping skills. Bober, and Regehr found that those in the helping professions such as social workers, psychologists and nurses, all believed that it
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Management Of Compassion Fatigue In Healthcare Professionals
Figley believed to manage compassion fatigue in health professional a multifaceted approach is required that includes prevention, assessment and minimising the consequences. The impacts of compassion fatigue are far reaching for both the individual health professional and organisations. Helping protect healthcare professionals from developing compassion fatigue and managing those experiencing high levels of job burnout and secondary traumatic stress can be done through self-care, evidence-based interventions and creating organisations that are better able to support and protect their workers. By protecting health professionals ensures high quality patient care. Over the past few decadesâ interventions have been developed to help reduce symptoms of compassion fatigue. Self-care techniques that can be used to help reduce the risk of developing compassion fatigues and managing the risks of providing compassionate care to patients and clients have been developed and promoted among health care professionals. Organisations also play a role in helping reduce the risk to their workers through better training, ongoing support and creating a support environment that recognises the risks to their staff.
4.5.1 Interventions for compassion fatigue
4.5.2 Self-care
4.5.3 Peer support programs
4.5.4 Protection through training
4.5.5 Culture change in healthcare facilities
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There Is A Better Way
While the solutions arent easy, they are imperative to lifelong success in our personal and professional lives. This blog exists for physicians like us who are looking for resources and solutions to learn, grow, and thrive in medicine.
First and foremost, understand that achieving wellness and returning to the strong leader that you once were takes time. Give yourself that first.
All too often, we are looked toward to be the strong one and to keep our feelings buried. Perhaps you have been told to keep your chin up and to stay strong, but have those phrases ever helped? Likely not. I want you to know that having these feelings are OK. Dont put them on the back burner or try to convince yourself that they dont exist.
Acknowledge them for what they are, and lets develop a plan to get you away from these feelings toward a life of fulfillment and contentment.
So lets get started
What Can Be Done
Organizational health researchers have been busy studying the most effective strategies to reduce, mitigate and prevent CF and VT in helping professionals. Here is what has been shown to be most effective:
Working in a Healthy Organization:
Studies show that who you work for is one of the biggest determinants of employee wellness. This includes:
- Access to a supportive, flexible manager who is open to regular workload assessments in order to reduce trauma exposure
- Leadership from a manager who encourages staff to attend ongoing professional education and who provides timely and good quality supervision as needed.
- Employees who had more control over their schedule reported a higher rate of job satisfaction overall. Reducing hours spent working directly with traumatized individuals was the single most effective way of reducing VT.
Personal Strategies:
The top personal strategies identified includes:
- Developing and maintaining a strong social support both at home and at work
- Increased self-awareness through mindfulness meditation and narrative work such as journaling
- Regular self care
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Take Breaks From Caregiving
When caregiving is your full-time job it can be hard to take breaks in between patients. However, you should still take them to decompress when they happen. Use the time to watch funny videos, try a guided meditation for burnout, or chat with a friend.
If the person youre caring for is a family member, take turns to provide care with other family members. A sibling, spouse, or close relative can swap turns to take care of the loved one.
Compassion fatigue often arises when you need to put on a happy face when someone is not in a happy place. If a loved one is battling cancer or Alzheimers it can be hard to watch them deteriorate. Its normal to feel conflicted, too. If you have adult children who can provide support so you can take a break every now and then, let them take the reins.
Taking the time to eat, shower, and sleep is crucial to ensure that you recharge your batteries so you can continue to be the loving and kind person you naturally are.
