Compassion Fatigue and Compassion Satisfaction among Critical Care Nurses

Critical care nursing is an area specifically dealing with patients experiencing highdependency and life -threatening conditions.Their role was complex as they were the essential partner in conjunction with the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) multidisciplinary team and the need to undertake family liaison duties, such as providing support and education to both the patient and the patient's family.These circumstances expose to high risk of compassion fatigue (CF) which will affect their job performance and satisfaction, harm emotional and physical health not only to themselves but to the patients.Therefore, this study was conducted to identify the level of CF and compassion satisfaction (CS) among critical care nurses.A total of 106 critical care nurses at public hospital were surveyed by using Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) scale.The nurses had moderate burnout (BO), secondary traumatic stress (STS) and CS.Nurses who worked in Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) had high STS compared to those worked in other units.The presence of compassion fatigue among nurses in critical care requires strategies which prevent, identify and mitigate compassion fatigue among these nurses.