What Causes Compassion Fatigue in Healthcare?
Why is working in healthcare so stressful?
Healthcare workers face unique challenges and pressure and are required to balance relationships with patients, family members and their employers. Healthcare workers can also experience a high level f stress within their everyday working conditions, from hazardous exposure, to physical demands and i injuries and understaffing.
Chronic Stress in the Workplace Can Lead to Compassion Fatigue or Burnout
Compassion fatigue is a normal result of chronic stress resulting from caregiving for people we feel compassion for. Some caregivers are more prone to fatigue than others, such as healthcare workers, social workers and mental health providers.
What Causes Compassion Fatigue in Healthcare?
It’s safe to say that helping professionals have empathy - the ability to understand and share feelings - unfortunately research has tied empathy with compassion fatigue, putting healthcare and helping professionals at higher risk of compassion fatigue
Four Common Causes of Compassion Fatigue in Healthcare
Exposure to repeat or secondary trauma in healthcare or mental health professionals
High mortality or suicide rates that healthcare workers and mental health professionals witness
Overworking, long hours, short staffing, double shifts, working from home after your day
Stress at home on top of the stress at work you are experiencing
Empathy burnout is common when helping professionals spend so much of their emotional strength relating deeply to the problems and stress of others that they forget to care for themselves. It is emotionally exhausting…
What Do We Do About Compassion Fatigue?
Shift thinking about empathy from a feeling to a skill
The skill of empathy can help others however being self aware can avoid burnout - not only will self awareness help you but it will allow you to also provide on-going support to others.
Set clear boundaries
Healthcare providers should set clear boundaries for what they are willing to do and what they are not willing not do. Boundaries allow healthcare professionals to create a safe space to be self aware.
Don’t take things personally
Helping professionals cannot invest personally in others, learning to identify how to best support others without making it about us!
Believe that others can save themselves
Provide support emotionally but know that only the individual experiencing problems can overcome them, we as helping professionals do not have the answers for them and we may not know better than them.
