Compassion Fatigue In Nursing

Nursing is known as being the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and abilities. It is also acknowledged as being an aid in the prevention of illness and injury, assistance of healing, relief of suffering through the diagnosis and treatment of human beings, and for advocating for not only the patients, but family members, whole communities, and populations (American Nurses Association, 2016.) Nursing requires ample skill, strength, and compassion in every dimension of the scope of nursing but often these intense and strategic job types relentlessly face fatigue on every level including physical, emotional and mental exhaustion. Compassion fatigue is an ever growing problem around the world and is affecting millions of nurses and medical professionals who work on …show more content…
These people include ‘first responders,’ or those in helping professions who are on the front lines witnessing the tragedies of others. These professionals include fire fighters, police, paramedics, and in this case, nurses.
Compassion Fatigue
In simplest form, compassion fatigue usually implies a state of cognitive exhaustion (Sabo 2006). In detail, the definition of compassion fatigue is known as being a combination of physical, emotional, and spiritual weakening associated with caring for patients in significant emotional pain and physical distress (Anewalt 2009; Figley, 1995). Hearing and witnessing horrific stories of abuse and other traumas has been shown to be very stressful and trauma experts have found that self-care techniques, both psychological and somatic, can reduce susceptibility to the internalization of traumatic stress