Abstract

Compassion fatigue among staff nurses during COVID-19

Author(s): Davinder Kaur, Preety Narula

Introduction: Compassion Fatigue (CF) concept is a state of reduced capacity for compassion as a consequence of exhaustion caused by contact with the suffering of others. This investigation might help to identify compassion fatigue among nurses during COVID- 19 and its relationship with selected demographic variables. Material and methods: After obtaining permission from authorities, this cross-sectional study was conducted in multispecialty hospital of Punjab during months of May -July 2021. Study population included 83 purposively selected staff nurse working in areas with COVID 19 patients and willing to participate in study. Data collection tool has two parts- sociodemographic data (age, qualification, area of work, experience, marital status and number of children) and 40 items related to Compassion fatigue at 5-point Likert scale. Tool was validated by experts in field of nursing and psychology. Reliability of tool was 0.893(Cronbach’s Alpha). Compassion fatigue total score was 200. Score 41-80 indicate low level, 81-120 indicate moderate level compassion fatigue, 121-160 denotes high level of compassion fatigue and 161-200 indicates very high compassion fatigue score. Data collection permission was obtained from authorities. As per their shift duty and during their free time, participants were contacted. After taking Consent, a questionnaire was given to them and requested them to fill it. Descriptive and inferential statistics done by SPSS version 21(IBM). Findings were presented in tables and figures. Results: Majority of the respondents had a moderate stress level (47%), followed by the respondents with high stress level (39.8%) In addition to this, about 10.8% of the respondents were dealing with very high stress level whilst 2.4% of the respondents had low stress levels. Thus, there is enough evidence that fitted regression model is non-significant and partially predicts the dependent variable: Stress score non-significantly for predictors: Age, Qualification, Area of work, Experience, Marital status and Number of children. Conclusion: During COVID pandemic nurses have moderate and severe level of stress among younger and working in intensive care units due to their long working hours and increased job responsibilities.