Compassion Fatigue and Compassion Satisfaction Among Nurses

Abstract

This study aimed to find out the difference in the levels of compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction between nurses working in emergency and medicine wards. The hypotheses for this study were that the nurses of trauma settings (emergency ward) will have higher levels of compassion fatigue (burnout and secondary traumatic stress) as compared to nurses in other inpatient settings (medicine ward) and the nurses of trauma settings (emergency ward) will have lower levels of compassion satisfaction as compared to nurses in other in-patient settings (medicine ward). A sample of 100 nurses was selected for this study in which 50 were chosen from each ward (emergency and medicine) from two government hospitals of Karachi city. The questionnaire used for this study was the 5th and latest version of Professional Quality of Life Scale (Stamm, 2009). Results were computed using t-test in Statistical Package for Social Sciences (version 21) which showed that hypothesis one was partially verified as burnout was found to be higher in emergency ward nurses (p=0.00) but no significant difference was found in the levels of the other variable for compassion fatigue which is secondary traumatic stress (P=0.12) and hypothesis two was verified with a significant difference (p=0.00) concluding that compassion satisfaction was lower in emergency ward nurses. Reasons for the significant results are discussed along with implications, limitations and recommendations.