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Compassion fatigue and burnout affect nurses in multiple areas of practice. The prevalence of both is growing. Compounding the problem is the incongruency of the definitions of the concepts. The Walker and Avant method of concept analysis was used to compare burnout and compassion fatigue.
Burnout and compassion fatigue (CF) are prevalent across healthcare professions, but particularly within nursing. Both are detrimental to nurses' professional quality of life (PQoL) (Magtibay et al., 2017). They contribute to nearly 20% of nurses leaving a position in the first year and many leaving the nursing profession (Kelly & Todd, 2017). Because definitions of burnout and CF are inconsistent, the relationship between the two is unclear (Elkonin & Van der Vyver, 2011; Sabo, 2011). Healthcare organizations and the professional nursing workforce are weakened when nurses experience CF or burnout (Kelly & Todd, 2017). Clear understanding of these concepts is needed to prevent their development and address interventions. The aim of this article is to compare CF and burnout using the Walker and Avant (2019) method of analysis.
Background
Burnout first was used by American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger (1974) to describe what occurs following exposure to constant occupational stress over time. The term compassion fatigue was used initially to describe nurses who had disconnected from or had become desensitized to patients and families (Joinson, 1992). While relationships between the two are unclear, burnout has been identified as related to CF (Jenkins & Warren, 2012), as an antecedent (Klein et al., 2018), or a consequence (Kelly & Todd, 2017).
Nurses can draw great satisfaction from patient care and experience positive PQoL. However, negative aspects of providing care exist and are detrimental to the PQoL (De La Rosa et al., 2018). Compassion fatigue was found to be associated with a nurse's intent to leave, job satisfaction (Kelly et al., 2015), poor patient outcomes, and poor quality of life for nurses (Adriaenssens et al., 2015; Bao & Taliaferro, 2015). Nurses experiencing CF and burnout cannot provide the level of care needed to satisfy patients (Maslach et al., 2012).
CF and burnout lack clear definitions or boundaries and are viewed differently throughout the literature. Are they the same, does one exist without the other, or are they two different but connected concepts? This...