Longitudinal study of a compassion fatigue resiliency intervention in nurse residents

Abstract

Nurse residents are at greater risk of compassion fatigue compared to more experienced nurses. The amended 2015 Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education Standards of Entry-To-Practice Accreditation of Nurse Residency Programs require that residency programs include approaches to prevent compassion fatigue in their education experiences. This manuscript reports 6-month follow-up results of a longitudinal study in new graduate nurses that evaluated the influence of a four-hour resiliency intervention for compassion fatigue in two hospitals with nurse residency programs within an academic medical center system. We previously reported a statistically significant decrease in mean STS from baseline to 2-months (p < .001). Using a paired t-test, compassion satisfaction (CS) and the two elements of compassion fatigue (CF), secondary traumatic stress (STS) and burnout (BO), were measured against 6-month post-intervention. Prevalence and changes in mean scores were reported, suggesting that the results found at 2-month follow-up (n = 94) were sustained at 6-month follow-up (n = 34). The mean STS showed a statistically significant decrease from 2-months and 6-months (p < .001). A decrease in BO and mean increase in CS were not statistically significant, but were trending in a positive direction. As theorized, both STS and BO decreased from baseline to 2-months and 6-months after the-intervention, and CS increased. These results indicate that early compassion fatigue resiliency education may be helpful in increasing CS and lowering the symptoms of CF in nurse residents.

Effectiveness of Lifestyle Health Promotion Interventions for Nurses: A Systematic Review

“…However, 13 studies did not find any improvement in measures of burnout/CF [59,[80][81][82]121,139,145,148,151,155,158,161,179], with one reporting increased burnout [84]. Of these 14 studies, four were RCTs [59,139,155,161], five were controlled studies [84,145,151,158,179] and five were uncontrolled studies [80][81][82]121,148]. The one study (controlled design) that reported an increase in burnout after the intervention (albeit a smaller increase than in the control group) applied stress education [84].…”

“…smoking education; see below for smoking cessation interventions) or had education as an element of a more complex or combined intervention. Education provision typically related to coping with stress (n = 19) [55,59,60,65,69,72,75,76,[84][85][86]91,92,[94][95][96]102,106,110], emotion regulation (n = 8) [56,73,74,90,99,100,105,109], communication skills (n = 2) [56,89], positive thinking/positive intervention (n = 4) [79,101,103,107], searching for meaning (n = 1) [108], compassion fatigue/burnout (n = 8) [66,70,71,[80][81][82]87,93], the selection optimisation compensation (SOC) model (n = 2) [57,62], self-care (n = 5) [61,63,77,…”

“…There were 49 studies that reported improvements in a measure of stress [55,66,70,71,[80][81][82]85,86,92,95,99,106,107,109,110,122,127,[131][132][133]143,[146][147][148][149][150]153,154,156,157,159,161,[163][164][165]167,170,175,178,[180][181][182][183][184][185][186][187][188]. Of the 49 studies reporting improvements in the measure of stress, 16 were RCTs [55,…”

“…Of the 49 studies reporting improvements in the measure of stress, 16 were RCTs [55,92,122,131,150,157,161,165,167,170,175,178,[182][183][184][185], seven were non-randomised controlled studies [86,99,106,110,147,149,188] and 26 were uncontrolled studies [66,70,71,[80][81][82]85,95,107,109,127,132,133,143,146,148,153,154,156,159,163,164,180,181,186,187]. The interventions in studies with positive outcomes used mindfulness/meditation...…”

“…The one study (controlled design) that reported an increase in burnout after the intervention (albeit a smaller increase than in the control group) applied stress education [84]. Those interventions that were not successful in generating changes in measures of burnout applied mindfulness/meditation [145,148,155,158,161], mindfulness/relaxation [151], CF education [80][81][82], CBT education [59], brief workplace (10-min) PA [121], diet supplementation [139] or music relaxation [179].…”