Compassion Fatigue free essay sample

October 06, 2012 Combating Compassion Fatigue Burn out is a state of mental tiredness, that a health care worker gradually gets . At this point the health care worker feels completely empty and worthless. Compassion fatigue is increasingly common in nursing. A healthcare worker may feel over worked, emotionally trained out, or some times feel frustrated and less productive. â€Å"Burnout is a problem born of good intentions because it happens when individuals try to reach unrealistic goals and end up depleting their energy and losing touch with themselves and others†. Wright 2003). In this paper will discus about warning signs for five major concepts, the nature of compassion fatigue and the cause for this, will discuss about the physical emotional and spiritual needs of a health care worker, and finally will discuss about examples of coping strategies and resources to over come this situation. The warning signs Compassion is one of the fundamental natures of nursing. All the health care workers are obligated to provide compassionate care to patients.Often compassion fatigue occurs due to the fact that healthcare workers over work or take the pain of their patients more emotionally, most of the time health care providers give sincere and compassionate care, very dedicated to their work, but forget to take care them selves, which often leads to this situation. As a result the health worker becomes compassionately numb. The major concepts of compassion fatigue are cognitive, emotional, occupational/social, spiritual, and physical. (Bush, N. J. 2009). Cognitive Person will experience less self esteem . Often one will find difficulty to do their duty because unable to concentrate on the task.May notice decrease in performance at work such as lack of interest, more absenteeism, negativism, and moral may be lost. In major conditions disorientation can be found. Emotional Emotional symptoms are frustration, feel very angry, want to quite the job, and feel depressed. Sometimes feels like to outburst the anger, feel grief. Having less or no compassion. Can have night mares, sleep disturbance, flight of feelings. Occupational/social Person who suffers with compassion fatigue can feel like isolated from family and friends. Have problems with co workers, and also with family relations.Can be less productive at work, work performance is getting low, increasing absenteeism. Physical Very tired even after rest, insomnia, irritability are common physical symptoms. If left untreated can get in to major physical problems includes cold, dizziness, chronic aches, digestion problems, heart burn, head ache, impaired body functions. Spiritual Spiritual symptoms include hopelessness, negativism, and low self esteem. Nature of problem and cause As nurses works in a health care environment there are many causes for compassion fatigue. Nurses interacts different persons and personality’s every day.Compassion fatigue can be caused from work place, high turn over, work load, having heavy patients, lifting and turning, having sick patients and get emotional stress from the pain of patients, taking care of a patient with out having any positive effect. Can caused by co-workers, unhappy work environment, some times can be caused by increased demand from the upper management, also from high expectations from patients and family. Striving to manage the time pressure, or dealing with complex patient care, interactions with other units or departments can be another reason for stress. Feeling powerlessness, frustrated and difficulty to meet professional and personal expectations can be a reason this. Managements most of the time cutting the cost, resulting do more with less cost often leads to stress and compassion fatigue. Manager’s puts pressure on high patient score, to get the reimbursement, but at the same time patient staff ratio remains same or even less. Also trying to get the core measures, trying to have the magnet level care all these can be cause for compassion fatigue. (Moore, D. 2009) When compassion fatigue occurs, it is going to ffect the person, their family and entire unit and patients, depending on the severity of condition physical and mental decline can occur. Physical, emotional and spiritual needs of caregiver To provide a holistic care to patient, nurses should have compassion. Compassion fatigue will prevent from providing such a care to patients due to the physical, mental and emotional imbalances. This is not good because patients always wants and they deserve for quality clinical care as well as warmth and compassionate care from their nurses. It is very important to have a balanced mind, body and spirituality to work in the health care field.It is very critical one to understand the signs and symptoms of compassion fatigue early enough. Being in the health care field, can have serious toll in once on health. Poor eating habits can be one of the physical needs to be addressed. Due to the busy shift or working at night shift all these can affect once nutritional needs. If one can take couple of extra care, then to a limit, can avoid this nutritional imbalance, like try to eat three well balanced meal per day, try to include fruits and vegetables and try to have healthy diet, drink enough water, and avoid coffee and sodas as much as can.Sleep disturbance or lack of sleep is another physical need. Lack of sleep can lead to exhaustion. Sleep restores once body and mind. So it is important to have adequate sleep and rest in order to function properly both physically and mentally. Exercise and relaxation is one of another physical need of a care giver. Keeping physically fit along with relaxation technique like yoga or listening music or watching movie, reading all these can help alleviate stress. (Espeland, K. 2006). Taking care of the emotional needs also important.So much energy to be used to take care of the patients physical mental and emotional needs, lot of time health care worker feel invisible. Anxiety, depression frustration, grief feeling guilty, feeling overwhelmed, increasing anger are some of the emotional feelings to be addressed. Doing some relaxing exercise, by doing exercise body will release some natural chemicals which will helps to boost emotions, deep breaths, yoga reading, listening music, talking to a friend all these can help to reduce the emotional stress. It is important to express the feelings. Should have some time for one.Should take small breaks or take short walk. Spiritual needs also equally important, but the desire has to come from the employe. By addressing the spiritual needs, one can cope up with difficult situation. Meditation, prayers, attending mass or other means of prayers use Chaplin service all of these can help to meet once spiritual needs. Try to make the best out of a bad situation, keeping faith; think positively all these practice can help one to gain their spiritual needs. Counting the blessings and being thankful for what have, all these practice can help to prevent or helps to get out from compassion fatigue. Coping strategies and Resources When nurses are healthy over all physically mentally and emotionally, then they can provide adequate care for the patients. So it is very important for nurses and other health care workers to take care themselves. The most important part is one to acknowledge whether one is suffering with compassion fatigue or burned out symptoms. There are many resources and coping strategies that can be useful towards this goal. Many work places offer programs to improve workers performance, so involve in to those activities.Attending gym can be helpful. Regular exercises have physical and mental benefits, which will help one to be more productive and worth . Nutritional consult for dietary needs can be useful. Having positive thoughts and self awareness is very important. Prayer and meditation can be used to get this positive energy . Having time for oneself, such as having family time, dinner together, eating a friend. Have a sense of humor, find out reasons to laugh. Set limits for personal life and work. Should never bring professional matters to home and personal matters to work place. Involving in to professional and social organization. Councelling also can be useful. Also there are websites that can be used as resource like www. americanhumane. org: American Humane offers Managing Compassion Fatigue 1-day training and awareness-building workshops Humane Society University offers training and awareness-building workshops, www. hsus2. org/hsu/cf. htm, www. GrowthHouse. org: A Guide to Death, Dying, Grief, Bereavement, and End of Life Care. ( Gupta and Woodman 2010) Conclusion Being in the health care field, every day nurses has to come in contact ith heart touching scenarios and emotionally stressed out. In addition to this health care is highly demanding and responsible profession. Nurses have more and more workload with less support system, yet they are required to provide satisfied care. All these can lead a person to get in to compassion fatigue. Prevention is better than cure. So taking some extra care for themselves like, adequate nutrition, diet ,water intake ,proper exercise and rest, balancing ,work and personal life all these would help one to lead a healthy life both at profession and their own personal life Reference