The role of psychological factors in oncology nurses' burnout and compassion fatigue symptoms

- Nurses' empathy and self-compassion predicted satisfaction with the work of helping.
- Personal distress predicted burnout symptoms.
- Psychological inflexibility predicted burnout and compassion fatigue.
- Psychological factors are important to understand nurses' professional quality of life.

PurposeThis study explored the role of several psychological factors in professional quality of life in nurses. Specifically, we tried to clarify the relationships between several dimensions of empathy, self-compassion, and psychological inflexibility, and positive (compassion satisfaction) and negative (burnout and compassion fatigue) domains of professional quality of life.MethodsUsing a cross-sectional design, a convenience sample of 221 oncology nurses recruited from several public hospitals filling out a battery of self-report measures.ResultsResults suggested that nurses that benefit more from their work of helping and assisting others (compassion satisfaction) seem to have more empathic feelings and sensibility towards others in distress and make an effort to see things from others' perspective. Also, they are less disturbed by negative feelings associated with seeing others' suffering and are more self-compassionate. Nurses more prone to experience the negative consequences associated with care-providing (burnout and compassion fatigue) are more self-judgmental and have more psychological inflexibility. In addition, they experience more personal feelings of distress when seeing others in suffering and less feelings of empathy and sensibility to others' suffering. Psychological factors explained 26% of compassion satisfaction, 29% of burnout and 18% of compassion fatigue.ConclusionWe discuss the results in terms of the importance of taking into account the role of these psychological factors in oncology nurses' professional quality of life, and of designing nursing education training and interventions aimed at targeting such factors.