Compassion Fatigue: Article Analysis

The definition of nursing is a profession or practice of taking care of the sick or the unable. It is the art and science of healing. The very core of nursing is putting the needs of others before your own. However, one very important question is oftentimes overlooked or never asked at all. Who takes care of the care giver? In, “We grieve too: One Inpatient Oncology Unit’s Interventions for Recognizing and Combating Compassion Fatigue”, this very question is addressed. The setting of this article is at the Lancaster General Hospital Oncology ward. The hospital houses 540 beds and is magnet-designated. Their employment turnover rate went from 5.5 % in 2009 and increased to 12.1% in 2010(Fetter, 2012) this was due to their inpatient nurses experiencing an epidemic of emotional …show more content…
A game plan needed to be implemented to stop this negative trend in its tracks. The answer was simple, we needed to look beyond the scrubs and view nurses as people. A bereavement support program was launched and provided a welcoming space for nurses to talk about their emotional state after the loss of a patient. A remembrance tree was also put up in the faculty lounge to allow nurses to honor the memory of loss. Nurses were also allowed to write bereavement cards to share fond memories of the deceased with the grieving family. This brought along peace and closure at a natural pace. After the new initiatives were put into play, the end of 2011 brought the 12.1 % turnover rate down to 7.5%. In conclusion, what can be taken from this article is that it is natural to momentarily run out of empathy and compassion. It does not make a bad nurse. However, it does make one human. Instead of looking at it as a character flaw, a person experiencing compassion fatigue needs to look for the flaw in their support system. Once that is recognize they also need act on rectifying the situation, since it is very common for nurses to ignore