Compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction and coping between male and female intensive care unit nurses

Pages: 49-52
Anjana Varadarajan (Department of Psychology, Ethiraj College for Women, Chennai, Tamil Nadu)
Jayanthi Rani (Department of Psychology, Ethiraj College for Women, Chennai, Tamil Nadu)

This study is anon-experimental, descriptive, co-relational design to examine the extent to which there is a relationship between Compassion fatigue and Compassion satisfaction with coping between Male and Female Intensive Care Unit Nurses. A convenience sample of 148 participants with 53 males and 95 females responded to the survey. The snow ball technique of non-probability sampling was used. The tools used to study the variables are the Professional Quality of Life Scale (pool) by Stamm (2012) and Ways of Coping Questionnaire by (Lazarus & Folkman, 1988). Inferential statistics comprising of the two tailed t-test and Pearson’s correlation test were considered for analysis. The results were further analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (version 22). The study found no statistical significance between males and females on both compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue dimension and with both the groups securing low scores on all three dimensions. The results from the correlational analysis indicated that Compassion satisfaction showed a significant relationship with self-controlling, positive reappraisal, seeking social support, accepting responsibility and plan ful problem solving. Burnout showed a significant correlation with escape avoidance, plan ful problem solving and positive reappraisal. Secondary traumatic stress had a statistical relationship with Confrontive coping, distancing, self-controlling, seeking social support, accepting responsibility and escape-avoidance.