Caregiver Burnout and Compassion Fatigue Caregiver Compassion

Caregiver Burnout and Compassion Fatigue

Caregiver Compassion Fatigue

Those who care for others as part of their professional duties must understand the nature of caregiver fatigue and the basics of caring for oneself. Generally, the focus of a caregiver remains on the care recipient to such a degree that personal limitations are ignored and self-care principles are shunted to the background. Caregivers rarely have realistic expectations about the long-term impact of caregiving, and invariably consider themselves up to the challenge. The immediacy of caregiving tends to obfuscate considerations about self-care and the end result is that caregivers tend not to develop a long-term plan for their own health and care. Simple issues such as pacing oneself seem unreasonable or impossible to attain in the stressful environment of caregiving.

Warning signs of compassion fatigue. It is normal for people who are engaged in long-term care of others to experience stress and it is normal for those symptoms of stress to be evident in their behavior and attitudes. These collections of symptoms associated with caregiving are referred to as compassion fatigue or caregiver burnout. Commonly, the symptoms of caregiver burnout and compassion fatigue are considered to include the following: An inordinate lack of energy or exhaustion that exceeds the challenges of caregiving; decreased productivity that seems to be related to difficulty concentrating, and headaches or other somatic symptoms. If a caregiver is sufficiently stressed, their behavior may result in abusive actions directed toward the person they are caring for, such as blaming the person for the demands of care or for their behavior, negative language directed toward the person, or rough handling of the care recipient.

Nature of caregiver burnout and compassion fatigue. From the perspective of the hospital or clinic, quality of care is important to patients and patient experience is important to the reputation of the hospital and its fiscal viability. Not only does the quality of care begin to slip in circumstances when caregivers experience burnout, but problems ripple through other staff members causing the problem to grow quite large. When professional caregivers experience burnout, the quality of their care diminishes such that patients and members of patients' families may score facilities low on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) in this dimension (Huster & Ansley, 2010). These low scores not only impact the bottom line, they add to the stress experienced by staff.

Physical, emotional, spiritual needs of caregivers. Bush (2009) asserts that compassionate caring must include elements of empathic boundaries, self-awareness, self-forgiveness, and spirituality and hope. The risks of empathic care, Bush (2009) argues, are similar to the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and include changes in the cognitive schema, emotional exhaustion, and a loss of sense of self. The relation of job satisfaction to coping strategies (Chen et al., 2009) clearly demonstrates that the need for administrative support for professionals working in medical facilities. Not all coping strategies and stress-reduction plans can be implemented without the support of hospital or clinic supervisors. It is both reasonable and logical to assume some level of mutuality in the efforts to address caregiver burnout and compassion fatigue in the professional ranks of nurses and doctors (Ekedahl, & Wengstrom, 2007). That said, it is incumbent on professional caregivers to do what they can to change their thought processes, avoid negative communication, be assertive about their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs, and to remember to keep humor in their personal and professional lives (Espeland, 2006).

Some institutions offer organized sessions for staff that focus on stress-reduction therapies (Gupta & Woodman, 2010). A stress-reduction therapeutic program focuses on generating ideas for solutions that can be put in place in much the way that action research is conducted. It is important for a stress-reduction program to revisit the issues and the solutions periodically to ensure that they are still on target and having the impact that is desired. The successful stress-reduction programs are likely to implement solutions on three levels: The individual level, the team level, and the service level. One of the reasons that the stress-reduction program is an effective approach is that focusing on solutions contributes to a sense of control. Consider that a "Lack of control is frequently cited as contributing to stress, low mood, and learned helplessness, where people believe they have no power to change an unpleasant situation, they may learn to act in a helpless way" (Seligman, 1974, as cited in Gupta & Woodman, 2010).

Coping strategies and resources for caregivers. Experts agree that most important step in combating compassion fatigue and caregiver burnout is to make a plan for dealing with it. This, naturally, requires a pre-requisite step: recognition that compassion fatigue and caregiver burnout are real experiences and that they can generate a constellation of telltale symptoms. Often, a caregiver is best able to make the time for self-care by elevating to it a higher priority than many other demands based on the fact that implementation of a caregiver plan is essential for quality, long-term care of the care recipient. Maintenance of health boundaries, which includes being tuned into and aware of oneself, can be one of the strongest supports to ensuring that long-term care can be provided with the best possible outcomes for everyone concerned.