Nurse Educator Compassion Fatigue and Intent to Stay

Abstract

Compassion fatigue is a problem commonly seen in helping professions and was recently identified in nurse educators. When already overwhelmed with the ramifications of the nurse educator shortage, feeling symptoms of compassion fatigue may be exacerbating the desire for nurse educators to leave the profession. The purpose of this quantitative cross-sectional correlational design with regression analyses was used to describe and predict nurse educators' level of compassion fatigue on the intentto-stay in academia. After surveying 146 nurse educators, results indicated nurse educators suffering from compassion fatigue predicted higher organizational commitment. Nurse educators who suffer from compassion fatigue and remain in their current position raises serious concerns regarding their physical and mental health and the rippling effect it can have on students. The unrecognized and understudied issue of compassion fatigue in nurse educators obligates nursing leaders to raise awareness and implement resilience training for the purpose of strengthening and supporting the personal and professional well-being of nurse educators.

Professional Quality of Life Among Nurses: Compassion Satisfaction, Burnout, and Secondary Traumatic Stress: A Multisite Study

“…However, higher education in another study was associated with reduced compassion fatigue (Zhang, Zhang et al, 2018), which is inconsistent with our findings. The explanation for this may be that nurses with higher education may have more advanced roles like leadership and education, which could contribute to their secondary traumatic stress, as discussed in the literature (Shingler-Nace et al, 2018; Ulmen & Lloyd, 2021). Thus, health institutions may benefit from raising awareness through resilience training for nurses, including nurse managers and educators, to support and strengthen their personal and professional wellbeing.…”