Compassion Fatigue Among Social Work Students in Field Placements

This pilot study, conducted with BSW and MSW field students at a public university in Southwestern United States, explored the psychological effect of compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction on social work students in field placements. Results from the Professional Quality of Life Scale's compassion satisfaction and fatigue subscales indicated that social work students appear to be motivated and committed to the profession and have higher scores of compassion satisfaction than the instrument average. Students' scores on their risk for burnout were slightly higher than those of other helping professionals and their risk for compassion fatigue during their field experience was similar to more experienced helping professionals.