Fadiga por compaixão nos profissionais de saúde de hematologia

Abstract

Compassion Fatigue is a syndrome characterized by an emotional and physical exhaustion resulting from the compassion that health professionals experience in working with people who are suffering, physical and / or mental. Little known and investigated in Portugal, the Compassion Fatigue is often widespread as Burnout Syndrome, which can cause an inadequate understanding and treatment professionals affected by it, risking their mental health. With this study we aim to contribute to the improvement of quality in the work life of the health teams of hematology and of care and services quality at an institutional level. We present the results of the Compassion Fatigue study by using the scale “Professional Quality of Life scale” version 5 (ProQOL 5) from Beth Stamm, translated, adapted and validated to the Portuguese population (Carvalho e Sá, 2011), as a tool for assessing the state of exhaustion of the health professionals. With this study we intend to answer the following question: “There is Compassion Fatigue in the health professionals carrying out functions in the hematology specialty?”. By using an intentional sampling, we obtained a sample of 73 health professionals from different areas of care, coming from three different hematology specialty services, all in the same health institution. We conducted a factor and reliable analysis of the instruments (ProQOL5 and GHQ28: Questionnaire of General Health from Ribeiro e Antunes, 2003 and subscales) through an internal consistency. We also conducted a Pearson bivariate correlation in order to assess how these subscales are associated with each other, and we found that the perception of health is significantly associated with the level of Compassion Fatigue. Regarding the Compassion Fatigue study, we noticed that, comparing the average values of Compassion Satisfaction, Burnout and Secondary Traumatic Stress obtained with the cut-off of the referred scale, a large percentage of professionals presents average to high levels of Compassion Satisfaction (80%) and Burnout (82%) and Secondary Traumatic Stress (77%), with 34% of these professionals having high levels of Secondary Traumatic Stress. We note that 83% of the doctors in the sample have average to high levels of Compassion Fatigue, 58% of which with high levels. In turn, 75% of the nurses also have average to high levels of Compassion Fatigue, 18% of which with high levels. For operating assistants, 72% of the sample had moderate to high levels of compassion fatigue, and 44% had high levels. Nurses are the professional group that less recognize their professional exhaustion resulting from the suffering of the patient and demonstrate that they need less to obtain medical certificates, medical leaves or even to be transfer to other services. However, nurses are the group that has higher levels of Burnout and Secondary Traumatic Stress. Operating assistants are the professional group with more disturbing levels of Compassion Fatigue, as they have lower levels of compassion satisfaction compared to other professionals. The results also revealed that health professionals working only in one hematology service have a higher perception of exhaustion, compared with professionals working in two or three hematology services. We can conclude from this study that the situations that cause more psychological and emotional stress in healthcare professionals are terminally illness and the suffering of the patient. The set of results of this study allow us to confirm the existence of significant levels of Compassion Fatigue in the context of hematology.

Date of Award	27 Feb 2015
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Luís Sá (Supervisor) & Zaida Charepe (Co-Supervisor)