Abstract:

Objective To investigate the status of compassion fatigue in clinical nurses, and explore the related factors. Methods Convenience sampling was adopted, and a total of 644 nurses were investigated by self-designed demographic questionnaire and professional quality of life scale. The contents of demographic questionnaire included gender, age, marital status, years of working experience, personnel, professional title, level of education, department of working, years of working in current department and post. Professional quality of life scale consisted of 30 questions in 3 subscales: compassion satisfaction, secondary traumatic stress and burnout. Univariate and multivariate analysis was employed respectively to explore the influencing factors of compassion fatigue in nurses. Results Five hundred and ninety-two questionnaires were recovered, with the response rate of 91.9%, and there were 566 valid questionnaires, with the effective rate of 95.6%. Among the 566 nurses, 60 were nurses with standardized training, and the other 506 were clinical nurses. The survey of 506 clinical nurses revealed that the scores of compassion satisfaction, secondary traumatic stress and burnout were 3.15±0.57, 2.73±0.54 and 2.78±0.55 respectively. Univariate analysis indicated that there were significant differences in the scores of compassion satisfaction among nurses with different age, marital status, professional title, years of working experience, years of working in current department, and post (P<0.05 or P<0.01), there were significant differences in the scores of secondary traumatic stress among nurses with different department of working and years of working in current department (P<0.05), and there were significant differences in the scores of burnout among nurses with different age, years of working experience, department of working and post (P<0.05 or P<0.01). Multivariate analysis demonstrated that factors significantly influencing compassion satisfaction of clinical nurses were age （t=3.601，P=0.000）, marital status （t=2.225，P=0.027）and years of working experience （t=－1.980，P=0.048）, factor significantly influencing secondary traumatic stress was department of working （t=－2.821，P=0.005）, and factors significantly influencing burnout were age （t=－4.289，P=0.000）and years of working in current department （t=2.649，P=0.008）. Conclusion Nurses and nursing managers should pay attention to the influencing factors of compassion fatigue and take measures to improve the physical and psychological health of nurses.

Key words: nurses, compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction, professional quality of life scale