Burnout, Compassion Fatigue and Resilience Among Practicing Nurses In La Trinidad, Benguet: A Comparative Correlational Study

Abstract

With the increasing healthcare demand and nursing being a helping profession, nurses are at higher risk of developing compassion fatigue and burnout with their direct involvement in caring for suffering patients. These affect their mental health, and work effectiveness, including patient outcomes. Limited studies on compassion fatigue, burnout, and resilience among nurses across different practice areas are available locally. Moreover, there are disagreements on factors of compassion fatigue and burnout among nurses. The study determined the level of nurses' risk of compassion fatigue and burnout, the level of resilience, and how these concepts are related. The study compared compassion fatigue and burnout across various nurse characteristics. Comparative-correlational research study was conducted online with 87 participants. Compassion Fatigue Self-Test for Practitioners and Brief Resilience Scale after pilot testing were utilized for data collection. Data were treated using descriptive and inferential statistics. Ethical clearance was secured from the university ethics committee. The practicing nurses in the municipality are at risk of compassion fatigue and burnout at low levels, while resilience is at a normal level. Burnout and resilience have a significant inverse correlation at a weak level, whereas compassion fatigue and resilience have a strong moderate inverse correlation. Nurses' compassion fatigue and burnout are not significant when grouped according to their demographic profile, including sex, years of work experience, and educational attainment. Though the low risks and normal resilience levels appear favorable, the nurses can have increased risks that may affect their well-being, including patient outcomes, if left ignored or undetected. Various nursing practice areas may conduct regular risk assessments for self-introspection. Furthermore, the associations of variables of the research can be tested among various health workers in other settings to validate the discrepancies in the result further.