Compassion Fatigue Threatens Patient Safety
May 1, 2024
Nurses are experiencing compassion fatigue more than ever — and patient safety can suffer as a result.
Long hours, staff shortages, and emotional and physical exhaustion have contributed to about 100,000 registered nurses leaving the workforce during the pandemic due to stress, according to a recent report. Two-thirds of all nurses say they are troubled by mental anguish or toxic emotions.1
Compassion fatigue can lead to patient safety issues, as well as liability and licensing concerns, as burned-out nurses become more prone to errors, says Georgia Reiner, MS, CPHRM, risk specialist for the Nurses Service Organization. Compassion fatigue can drive nurses and nursing professionals from the profession and different specialties, making the care environment more difficult for those who do stay in the profession or specialties.
“When you see those increases in compassion fatigue, that’s when nursing errors can be more likely to occur. When we look at our nursing claims and we break them down by specialty, we do see claims and nursing specialty areas that are highly reliant on nurses providing empathetic and personalized care to their patients,” Reiner explains. “We see nursing claims that have higher than average severity or higher than average total incurred payments in specialties like behavioral health, correctional health, post-anesthesia care units, critical care units, [and] home care.”
When those nurses start to experience compassion fatigue, that can contribute to making mistakes, such as failing to recognize patient complications, failing to follow through on policies and procedures that could help to keep patients safe, and improper management of nursing treatment, Reiner says.
Risk managers can help nurses who may be suffering from compassion fatigue by encouraging policies and work structures that help nurses feel like their work is rewarding, Reiner says. Do they feel a sense of fairness and transparency in the workplace in terms of how decisions are made? Do they feel like their workload is manageable? Do they have the support they need to fulfill their work duties to the best of their ability?
“Nurses need to feel a sense of community, so things like nursing support group mentorship can go a long way in helping nurses cope with their work situations,” Reiner says. “It helps to have someone who understands their work environment and can help them brainstorm ways to address common concerns. That can go a long way to helping prevent compassion fatigue.”
REFERENCE
- National Council of State Boards of Nursing. NCSBN research projects significant nursing workforce shortages and crisis. April 13, 2023. https://www.ncsbn.org/news/ncs...
SOURCE
- Georgia Reiner, Risk Specialist, Nurses Service Organization, Healthcare Division, Aon’s Affinity Insurance Services, Philadelphia. Phone: (215) 293-1178. Email: [email protected].
Nurses are experiencing compassion fatigue more than ever — and patient safety can suffer as a result. Long hours, staff shortages, and emotional and physical exhaustion have contributed to about 100,000 registered nurses leaving the workforce during the pandemic due to stress, according to a recent report.
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