Addressing Compassion Fatigue in Trauma Emergency and Intensive Care Settings: A Pilot Study

BACKGROUND: Emergency and intensive care health care professionals are experiencing exhaustion and helplessness, which may cause compassion fatigue. Unaddressed compassion fatigue impacts staff morale and patient safety. Structured debriefing sessions may reduce compassion fatigue by providing social support and increasing job satisfaction. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the feasibility of a 12-week pilot of structured debriefing sessions and its impact on compassion fatigue experienced by emergency and intensive care health care professionals after patient death. METHODS: In this 12-week pilot study (March 2021 to May 2021), we used a preintervention/postintervention design to determine the feasibility of structured debriefing among trauma health care professionals experiencing patient death in an urban, academic, 300-bed, Midwest, Level II trauma center. Compassion fatigue was measured using the Professional Quality of Life Measure survey. Univariate descriptive statistics, independent unpaired t tests, and chi(2) tests examined the intervention impact. RESULTS: Fifty-six health care professionals participated in 20 debriefing sessions during the 12-week intervention: 37 (80%) registered nurses, 10 (5.6%) respiratory therapists, and 5 (11.2%) nursing assistants or emergency medical technicians. The debriefings covered nearly half of all patient deaths (38%). No significant differences were seen in burnout (M = 25.5, SD = 5.4, p = .47), secondary traumatic stress (M = 23.9, SD = 5.6, p = .99), or compassion satisfaction (M = 36.8, SD = 6.4, p = .61). CONCLUSIONS: Structured debriefings to address compassion fatigue among trauma health care professionals are feasible, but further research on effectiveness is needed. Administration-provided emotional support strategies may assist health care professionals in processing work-related stress.