Combating Compassion Fatigue Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Combating Compassion Fatigue - show ExampleCognitive symptoms fee-tail apathy, disorientation, preoccupation with trauma, minimization, rigidity, and lowered concentration. Emotional symptoms include anxiety, anger, fear, sadness, depleted, blunted, enhanced affect, shock, depression, helplessness, numbness, guilt, and powerlessness (Portnoy, 2011). The several(prenominal) whitethorn mystify troubling dreams similar to those of the patient. The individual may also experience sudden and driven recall of a frightening situation while wreaking with the family or the patient. Concerning behavioral symptoms, the individual may be withdrawn, have poor sleep, a change in appetite, isolated, and hyper-vigilance, have nightmares, moody, and irritable. Spiritual symptoms include permeative hopelessness, questioning of ones religious beliefs, skepticism, loss of faith, loss of purpose, and questioning of the meaning of life. Somatic symptoms entail rapid heartbeat, pains and aches, impair ed immune system, difficulty staying or falling asleep, headaches, dizziness, difficulty in breathing, and diaphoresis (Portnoy, 2011). The Nature of the Problems and Their Causes Portnoy (2011) states that compassion fatigue is caused by empathy. Compassion fatigue is a form of burnout that appears unexpectedly and with bantam or no warning. The condition is generally persistent than burnout. It is the natural outcome of stress it results from helping and warmth for the suffering or traumatized individuals. It entails a preoccupation with the individual or with the individuals trauma and it does non need to be at the stressful occasion. The condition can result from just organism receptive to an individuals painful narrative. It is further described as the convergence of primary stress, secondary traumatic stress, and cumulative stress in the lives of helping professionals and other care providers (Portnoy, 2011, p48). On the other hand, burnout is described as a type of menta l distress that is manifested in normal individuals who have never suffered from prior psychopathology. The individuals experience decreased performance at work because of the negative behaviors and attitudes. The main dimensions of burnout include emotional exhaustion, facial expression of cynicism and depersonalization, drop of personal accomplishment, and sense of ineffectiveness. Emotional exhaustion is the basic individual stress indicator of burnout and it refers to the feeling of being depleted and overextended of ones physical and emotional resources. The exhaustion causes the individual to distance himself cognitively and emotionally from work and it is a means devised by the individual to cope with the work overload (Coyle and Ferrell, 2010). Depersonalization (detachment from job) and feeling of cynicism is the burnout interpersonal context dimension and it refers to the excessively detached response and negative callous to various features of the job. inadequacy of pe rsonal accomplishment and sense of ineffectiveness is the self-evaluation burnout dimension and it indicates the lack of productivity and achievement at work and feeling of being incompetent. Lack of personal accomplishment emerges from the lack of resources to complete the work for instance, the lack of undeniable tools, lack of crucial information or even insufficient time (Coyle and Ferrell, 2010). The Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Needs Of the primary care provider When caring for patients in palliative care, the