Compassion Fatigue in Nursing Professionals from Complex Care Units of a Brazilian University Hospital

• DOI: 10.20944/preprints202201.0379.v1
• Publication Date: 2022-01-26T12:16:59Z
• Authors: Luciano Garcia Lo...; José Gustavo Mont...; Daniela Menezes G...; Franciso Rosemiro...; Betânia Maria Per...; Isabel Cristina K...; Jacqueline Flores...; Fernando Braga do...; Márcio Andrade Bo...; Max dos Santos Af...; Carlos Leonardo F...; Natalia Sperli Ge...; Maria de Lourdes ...; Neyson Pinheiro F...; Francielle Garcia...; Vagner Ferreira d...; Anderson Reis de ...; Nuno Damácio de C...; Keith Kelli Jora ...; Sidiane Teixeira ...; Marcos Henrique D...
• Keywords: 03 medical and health sciences; 0302 clinical medicine; nursing_health_studies; 3. Good health

The aim was to evaluate levels of compassion fatigue in nursing professionals working in complex care units of a Brazilian university hospital. A cross-sectional, descriptive, and correlational study was carried out with nursing workers from complex care units of a University Hospital. Data were collected in the second half of 2019, in the pre-pandemic period of COVID-19, using the Brazilian version of the Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQoL-BR). A total of 146 individuals partici-pated, including 41 (28.1%) nurses, 92 (63.0%) nursing technicians and 13 (8.9%) nursing assis-tants. It was observed that 26.1% presented high level of compassion satisfaction. For 17.5% there was level of burnout and 49.7%, medium level of burnout; and 22.0% with high and 46.1% with medium level of secondary traumatic stress. Twenty-eight (19.2%) professionals had compassion fatigue, of which 16 (57.1%) were nursing technicians. There is a high percentage of professionals with medium and high rates of burnout and secondary traumatic stress, a fact that is reinforced by the presence of compassion fatigue in almost one fifth of the studied individuals. These results highlights how much the health of these workers can be affected by living with traumatic patient experiences.