Clinical Supervision: An Antidote to Personal and Team Compassion Fatigue (SA504)

Abstract

1.To propose an expanded role of clinical supervision on the palliative care team utilizing a mental health professional's model.2.To share the University of California, San Diego Doris A. Howell Palliative Care Team experience utilizing clinical supervision.3.To suggest research to explore the correlation between compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue with group clinical supervision on palliative care teams. Hospice and palliative care (HPM) professionals gravitate toward this field because we can provide patient- and family-centered, compassionate care. However, the intense nature of this field can frequently lead to compassion fatigue—irritability, fatigue, and lack of joy leading to a sense of helplessness, decreased compassion, and a preoccupation with perceived traumas. Compassion fatigue occurs when providers are exposed to repeated empathetic encounters, which may have a traumatic element, and experience an associated countertransference reaction. In contrast, burnout can manifest with similar behaviors, stems from workplace issues, and lacks the added element of countertransference. Clinicians who care for dying patients are at high risk for both compassion fatigue and burnout. For the purposes of this presentation, we will focus on compassion fatigue and propose a potential tool to combat it. Clinical supervision is an integral part of the mental health professional's training, which explores how one's personal past can impact one's ability to connect and affect patient care. This process is facilitated by an experienced mental health professional to explore countertransference and how it may contribute to poor or ineffectual patient care (by avoiding or blaming the “difficult patient”). Clinical supervision has been part of the University of California, San Diego Doris A. Howell Palliative Care Service since February 2011. We immediately observed increased team member self-awareness leading to increased job satisfaction, improved team dynamics, enhanced team member retention, and decreased compassion fatigue. We describe our experience and present this model as a potential tool to prophylact palliative care team compassion fatigue.