Abstract
BackgroundHospice workers are required to regularly use emotional regulation strategies in an attempt to encourage and sustain terminally ill patients and families. Daily emotional regulation in reaction to constantly watching suffering patients may be intensified among those hospice professionals who have high levels of compassion fatigue. The main object of this study was to examine the relationship between daily exposition to seeing patient suffering and daily emotional work, and to assess whether compassion fatigue (secondary traumatic stress and burnout) buffers this relationship.MethodsWe used a diary research design for collecting daily fluctuations in seeing patients suffering and emotional work display. Participants filled in a general survey and daily survey over a period of eight consecutive workdays. A total of 39 hospice professionals from two Italian hospices participated in the study.ResultsMultilevel analyses demonstrated that daily fluctuations in seeing patients suffering was positively related to daily emotional work display after controlling for daily death of patients. Moreover, considering previous levels of compassion fatigue, a buffering effect of high burnout on seeing patients suffering - daily emotional work display relationship was found.ConclusionsA central finding of our study is that fluctuations in daily witness of patients suffering are positively related to daily use of positive emotional regulations. Further, our results show that burnout buffers this relationship such that hospice professionals with high burnout use more emotional display in days where they recurrently witness patients suffering.
Highlights
Hospice workers are required to regularly use emotional regulation strategies in an attempt to encourage and sustain terminally ill patients and families
According to a recent systematic review on wellbeing of hospice care professionals (HCPs), “there is relatively little research to address the psychological wellbeing of the staff” who deal with death and dying on a daily basis in hospice context (p. 2) [7]
The main purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between daily fluctuations in seeing patient suffering and daily emotional work display, and to assess whether compassion fatigue (CF) (STS and burnout) moderate this betweenperson relationship
Summary
Hospice workers are required to regularly use emotional regulation strategies in an attempt to encourage and sustain terminally ill patients and families. The World Health Organization emphasized the need for improving the quality of life of patients and relatives facing the problem of life-threatening illness by addressing their physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs [2,3,4]. In this sense, hospice care professionals (HCPs) provide intensive interventions aimed at improving quality of life and relieving suffering [5, 6]. It has been calculated that 50% of HCPs are at risk of reduced psychological wellbeing as a result of inadequate organizational strategies related with many of these demands [14]
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