Factors Influencing Compassion Fatigue among Hospice and Palliative Care Unit Nurses

PURPOSE: This descriptive study aimed to explore nursing workplace spirituality, end-of-life care stress, and resilience as factors influencing compassion fatigue among nurses working in hospice and palliative care units. METHODS: Data were collected using a self-report questionnaire completed by 146 nurses at 14 hospice and palliative care institutions across South Korea who had worked in a hospice and palliative care institution for at least 6 months and had experience providing end-of-life care. Data were collected from February 25, 2019 to April 12, 2019, and analyzed using SPSS for Windows version 18.0. As appropriate, descriptive statistics, the t-test, analysis of variance, the Scheffé test, Pearson correlation coefficients, and stepwise multiple regression were used. RESULTS: The survey results showed that factors influencing compassion fatigue were resilience, subjective health status, current satisfaction with the hospice ward, and end-of-life care stress. Higher levels of resilience, a subjective health status of “healthy”, high levels of current satisfaction with the hospice ward, and lower levels of end-of-life care stress were associated with lower levels of compassion fatigue, explaining 42.9% of the total variance. CONCLUSION: The results of this study suggest that resilience is an important factor mitigating compassion fatigue among nurses at hospice and palliative care institutions. Therefore, intervention programs should be developed to reduce compassion fatigue.