Read the articles listed in the readings for this module and use them as a starting point for researching the topic of compassion fatigue, caregiver burnout, and related issues. Evaluate your sources...

Compassion Fatigue
Compassion fatigue is a problem area related to burnout type which is seen in
depressed or overworked professionals in the area of healthcare or care giving. It is a delicate
process in which the person gradually goes through the state of mental fatigue and gets
completely devoid of energy or motivation after working for couple of years. According to
Maslach, burnout is a physical and psychological disorder which deals with the severe
emotional drain, depersonalization and reduced sense of self-worth.
Compassion is a multifaceted emotional process which allows the caregivers to sustain and
hold themselves emotionally while retaining the hope and motivation in the patient when he
or she is going through despair and physical pain. This quality requires an innate conviction
and flexibility in passion, ethics, beliefs and self-worth. Most care givers and health care
professionals who deal with the patients on regular basis and are required to be beacon of
hope them are at the risk of emotional exhaustion at their work. According to a saying in
Native American culture, when a person heals someone he or she needs to give away a piece
of oneself until, at some point, one will require healing. Many researchers describe the
disorder of compassion fatigue as the unique stress that people in care giving professions like
nurses, psychotherapists, ministers go through in the process of providing care to others. It
can be differentiated from a normal job burnout in that, compassion fatigue results not only
from the environmental factors of sadness, depression and grief but also, the needs of the
patient like providing remedy for pain, discomfort, fear and anxiety. It is the this intricate
nature of factors that actually leads to the various symptoms of compassion fatigue like
tiredness, depression, anger, inefficiency, and, at the end of the range, apathy and
detachment.
Another severe form of compassion fatigue is called which is seen mostly in the care
providers to the cancer patients which need higher level of motivational care because most
cases are terminally ill and require constant love and care in order to be alive, thus the tresses
experienced by oncology caregivers are twofold and interweaved.
Another form of compassion fatigue deals with compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma
caused by empathic engagement, but the...