Sometimes the patient they treat, help or care for does not improve, causing these people to have a form of post-traumatic stress disorder: compassionate fatigue, a condition that is the result of constant energy wear and tear with treatment the help they offer and the compassion they feel for their patients.
This exhaustion leads to the emotional state in which health professionals can remain when they witness the physical, psychological, social and spiritual suffering experienced by those around them, and who may over time indirectly experience the pain and discomfort of these people.
- When a person undergoes dialysis almost every day of the week.
- An emotional link is inevitably created between the health care provider and the patient; they may not be able to establish a personal relationship.
- But simply see each other every day and share observations and hopes.
- To improve generates a friendly commitment.
In these cases it is essential to know how to put yourself in the other person’s place, understand their needs and how the person feels strengthens the bond that is created, but empathy can also play a bad turn when acting as a trigger for certain types of stress. In fact, empathy is the trigger for the syntomatological image of compassionate fatigue.
Empathy increases the quality of treatment and patient involvement, but at the same time increases vulnerability to professional wear and tear, the greater empathy, the greater the risk of feeling this effect.
Compassion fatigue was a term coined in 1995 by Charles Figley, director of the Trauma Institute at Tulane University in New Orleans, USA, who noted that health professionals working in the mental health field of the traumatized people indirectly felt the effects of the trauma of the patients they treated.
While the origin of this term is relatively recent, the brain mechanisms that explain it have been known for some time and are linked to empathy and imitation behaviors, so the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, and mirror neurons are responsible for someone feeling what someone else feels.
Moreover, if these feelings hide deep pain and enormous suffering, this capacity for empathy is strengthened and the tiredness of compassion becomes more evident.
Compassionate fatigue is the result of a cumulative process, as we have seen, this process develops due to prolonged emotional discomfort through continuous and intense contact with patients, but what are the signs and symptoms that may show compassionate fatigue?
In the professional field we can also identify some signs such as low motivation, feelings of misunderstanding, a perception of low vocational training or a departure from the team.
As we see, compassion fatigue shares symptoms characteristic of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But before we explain this relationship, let’s see what PTSD is.
This disorder arises from a very stressful or traumatic event, which poses an extreme physical threat or harm to the individual. Thus, the body generates a response to stress, the result of the effort to adapt to the environment. It can happen at any age and appear after events.
In turn, the tiredness of compassion appears abruptly and abruptly, in addition, in this case, it has multiple triggers that generate a stressful effect on the health care professional, is a constant exposure, an emotional commitment and the therapeutic relationship it maintains with patients.
Compassionate fatigue shares with PTSD a number of symptoms of psychopathological status.
Knowing what compassion fatigue makes us aware of the possible consequences of emotional mismanagement in the treatment of patients by health professionals, here are some suggestions for dealing with this situation:
As we can see, the collateral effects of a situation or circumstance of great emotional charge and suffering are tangible, even among professionals who know how to deal with it, taking care of yourself is a priority that we cannot forget, in fact, it is the fundamental priority to offer a treatment of quality and attention to others.