Compassion fatigue: A Study of critical care nurses in Turkey

This study was conducted to determine the level of compassion fatigue which experienced by nurses who work in intensive care units and factors that affecting it.In a cross sectional design, critical nurses were surveyed by using questionnaire and compassion fatigue (CF) subscale of the Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL R-IV) to measure levels of compassion fatigueat a large National Education and ResearchHospital located in northwestof Turkey. A total of 69 critical care nurses participated in the study, for a response rate of 78%.A series of cross tab analyses examined the relationship between nurses demographics and compassion fatigue (CF) subscale. To analyze the data further, participants were recategorized into 2 groups for CF scores: (1) higher than 17: high risk and (2) lower than 17: low risk.Findings show that critical care nurses were at high risk (52.7%) and low risk (47.3%) for CF. Nurses informed significant differences in compassion fatigue on the basis of age, years of critical care experience, working hours (weekly).