When does compassion fatigue hit social workers? Caring for oncology patients in Korea

Abstract

Understanding compassion fatigue is vital to supporting the health and well-being of oncology psychosocial service providers and oncology patients. This study aims to examine when compassion fatigue is experienced and how it is dealt with by medical social workers providing psychosocial care for oncology patients. A purposeful sample of 12 medical social workers was recruited; each participant was working at a hospital and providing psychosocial care for oncology patients in Korea. Through in-depth qualitative interviews, the following themes emerged regarding oncology social workers’ experiences with compassion fatigue: (1) when compassion fatigue hits me (when bonding with clients, when facing a client’s death, when facing organizational hurdles, when feeling inadequate) and (2) how I deal with compassion fatigue (communicating with others, setting professional boundaries, finding ways to help myself, creating grief rituals, building professional identity). Implications and psychosocial interventions that may help reduce oncology social workers’ compassion fatigue are discussed.

Why being a social worker in pediatric oncology is stressful and exhausting? A qualitative study in Iranian context

“…Another influential factor affecting this lack of professional competence is an inability to separate work from home life. The results of this study, in line with other reports show that the effect of unpleasant work experienced by social workers and their inability to manage these experiences had an affect on their personal life and caused burnout (Simon et al, 2005;Yi et al, 2016).…”

“…Likewise, previous studies on the work of social workers in the field of cancer have identified compassion fatigue, vicarious traumatization, secondary traumatic stress and burnout (Simon et al, 2005Yi et al, 2016.…”

“…Yi & et al (2016) found that social workers in oncology were heavily burdened by difficult tasks such as talking about death, assisting clients to make end-of-life plans, or comforting families after death of a loved one. Other studies also report that establishing long-term and close relationships and empathic engagement with a cancer patient and his or her family had a heavy emotional burden and induced compassion fatigue for the service providers (Cho & Jung, 2014;Lee & Min, 2014).…”

“…Cancer patients are often in great need and deserving of important medical care as well as appropriate emotional and mental support (Saint-Louis, 2010).Professional caregivers are in contact with terminally ill patients and their families on a daily basis and they repeatedly experience death of the patients (Rohan, 2009;Stearns et al., 2001). The end result of such long-term exposure to stress is often reflected in job burnout and fatigue (Saint-Louis, 2010; Yi et al, 2016).…”

“…Previous studies, using various different approaches have addressed stress, job burnout and compassion fatigue among members of medical teams, mainly nurses, but only a few of these studies have included social workers (Mukherjee et al, 2009;Najjar et al, 2009). There are relatively few studies on experiences of social workers in the field of cancer in general, as well as a shortage of research in pediatric oncology (Simon et al, 2005;Yi et al, 2016). And regarding the methodological nature of these studies (quantitative studies), experiences of pediatric oncology social workers (POSW) has yet to be evaluated.…”