Compassion satisfaction and fatigue in cardiovascular nurses: A cross-sectional descriptive study

Background: Cardiovascular nurses play a key role in improving the treatment outcomes in patients. Compassion satisfaction and fatigue influence the quality of nursing care. Thus, it is important to examine the levels of compassion satisfaction and fatigue in cardiovascular nurses. This study was performed to determine compassion satisfaction and fatigue in cardiovascular nurses. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional, descriptive study was conducted with a single-stage design on 200 cardiovascular nurses who were randomly selected from among nurses working in four educational hospitals in Isfahan, Iran, in July–October 2018. Data collection was conducted using the Professional Quality Of Life Scale (version 5) (ProQOL- version 5) with 30 items in the three subscales of compassion satisfaction, burnout, and Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS). The results were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics in SPSS software. Results: The results indicated the high mean (SD) score of 41.39 (5.54) for compassion satisfaction and the moderate mean (SD) scores of 26.93 (4.62) and 26.69 (5.90) for burnout and STS, respectively, in more than two-thirds of the nurses. Pearson correlation coefficient showed no significant relationship between the nurses' age, level of education, work experience, and monthly working hours and scores of compassion satisfaction, burnout, and STS, and total compassion fatigue score (p > 0.05). Work experience was directly related to STS score (r = 0.18,p = 0.01). However, it had no significant relationship with compassion satisfaction and burnout (p > 0.05). Conclusions: The results showed that the score of compassion satisfaction was high and fatigue was moderate in the cardiovascular nurses. Further research seems necessary to enhance compassion satisfaction and reduce fatigue in nurses.