Abstract
Compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma can be a consequence of social work practice in all contexts, including the fast-paced, crisis driven hospital environment. Four metropolitan hospitals collaborated with an academic partner to explore the understanding and awareness that hospital-based social workers have in this area, and to investigate both individual and organisational responsibility. The research utilised a Participatory Action Research methodology with Stage One being a collaboratively developed survey. The results of the survey showed that social workers’ understanding is impacted by their knowledge of compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma, the nature of everyday hospital practice, and the identification, provision of, and engagement in personal self-care and workplace support strategies. The findings highlighted the dual responsibility that employing hospitals and individuals have to care for themselves and each other, including the capacity for social workers to use supervision and collegial relationships to support their coping and resilience.
Highlights
In Australia, the healthcare sector is the largest employer of social workers and has a steadily increasing labour force (Cleak & Turczynski, 2014)
The final outcomes of Stage One of this research were the identification of three key themes that impacted on their perception of compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma: the social worker’s knowledge of compassion fatigue and/or vicarious trauma; the nature of hospital social work practice; and the identification, provision of, and engagement in, personal self-care strategies and workplace support measures
The findings highlighted the perception of responsibility for compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma in the hospital setting to be shared between the individual social workers and the employing hospital
Summary
In Australia, the healthcare sector is the largest employer of social workers and has a steadily increasing labour force (Cleak & Turczynski, 2014). A commonality across the literature when discussing the symptoms of either compassion fatigue or vicarious trauma, or the end point of burn-out, includes both emotional and physical responses, as well as distinct lifestyle behaviours (Espeland, 2006) These symptoms, or impacts from the work, can be mitigated by supportive strategies that can be put in place, both at home and in the workplace. Supervision has a central role in preventing compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma when the supervisor creates a space to explore and process a worker’s feelings towards both common and extraordinary cases (Walker, 2004), and can foster quantity, quality and connection in both collegial and supervisory relationships (Slattery & Goodman, 2009) It is from this environment – a workplace with structured supervision and organisational support mechanisms – that questions were raised regarding the wellbeing of the social work staff and their everyday capacity. The findings discussed here are from Stage One and focus on staff concerns and perceptions
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