Background: Nurses who are constantly being exposed to patients’ suffering can lead to compassion fatigue. There is a gap in the latest research regarding nurses’ experiences of compassion fatigue. Little is known about how compassion fatigue affects the nurse as a person, and indications of how it affects the profession are scarce. Aim: The aim of this study was to explore compassion fatigue experienced by nurses and how it affects them as persons and professionals. Research design, (...) participants, and research context: A qualitative explorative approach was used. The data consisted of texts from interviews with seven nurses in various nursing contexts. Content analysis was used. Ethical consideration: Ethical approval was sought and granted from an ethics committee at the university where the researchers were based, and written, informed consent was obtained from all the participants. Findings: Five themes were discovered: Compassion as an empathic gift and compassion fatigue as a result of compassion overload, Compassion fatigue as exhausting the nurse as a professional and private person, Compassion fatigue as a crisis with potentially valuable insights, Compassion fatigue can be handled by self-care and focus on self, and Compassion fatigue is affected by life itself and multifaceted factors. Discussion: Compassion stress and overload can lead to compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue affects the nurse’s ability to compassion, and the caring is no longer experienced in the same way; the nurses experienced it as being deprived of the gift of compassion. Compassion fatigue implicates a crisis with potentially valuable insights. Conclusion: Compassion fatigue can be symbolized as bruises in the soul, hurtful, but with time it can fade away, although it leaves a sense of caution within the nurse, which can affect the suffering patient. (shrink)

Mental fatigue is a psycho-biological state that impairs sports-related performances. Recently, it has been proved that MF can affect basketball performance. However, a systematic overview detailing the influences of MF on basketball performance is still lacking. This study aims to investigate the effects of MF on the physical, technical, tactical, and cognitive performance of basketball. We used the databases of PubMed, Web of Science, SPORTDiscus, Scopes, and CKNI for articles published up to 31 May 2021. The articles included in (...) this study were projected to test whether MF influences basketball athlete performance. Only experimental design studies were selected, and the control condition was without MF. Finally, seven articles fit the inclusion criteria. The results imply that MF impairs the technical aspects of basketball and the players' cognitive [take-the-first heuristics and decision-making] performance, which results in athletes not using their techniques skillfully and being unable to make practical decisions during critical points in the game. In addition to that, the influences of MF on physical and tactical performance have not been studied. Further studies should look into comprehensive research on the influences of MF on basketball performance, especially on a player's physical and tactical performance.Systematic Review Registration: [https://inplasy.com/] [INPLASY2021100017]. (shrink)

The term compassion fatigue has come to be applied to a disengagement or lack of empathy on the part of care-giving professionals. Empathy and emotional investment have been seen as potentially costing the caregiver and putting them at risk. Compassion fatigue has been equated with burnout, secondary traumatic stress disorder, vicarious traumatization, secondary victimization or co-victimization, compassion stress, emotional contagion, and counter-transference. The results of a Canadian qualitative research project on nurses? experience of compassion fatigue are presented. (...) Nurses, self-identified as having compassion fatigue, described a change in their practice by which they began to shield and distance themselves from the suffering of patients and families. Time to help patients and families cope with suffering seemed unavailable, and many felt they were running on empty and, ultimately, impotent as nurses. Feelings of irritability, anger, and negativity arose, though participants described denying or ignoring these emotions as a way to try to survive their work day. Difficulties with work carried over into the nurses? personal lives, affecting their relationships with family and friends. Such experiences invariably called into question the participants? identity, causing them to reflect on the kind of nurse they were. The participants? compassion fatigue created a sense of hopelessness regarding positive change, although some nurses described strategies that seemed to help alleviate their compassion fatigue. (shrink)

The article maintains that chronic fatigue syndrome can be properly understood only by taking an integrated perspective in which evolutionary, developmental and ecological aspects are considered. The integrative approach, supplemented by a complexity theory and psychoneuroimmunological research, is capable of explaining why there are so few structural aberrations to be found in chronic fatigue syndrome and why specific treatment is so difficult to establish. A major outcome of the investigation, that all individuals with chronic fatigue syndrome are (...) diseased in their own way, emphasises the need to study the development of personalised life histories. It also highlights an ethical dimension; personalised disease defies essentialist thinking on patient management. Another major outcome, which follows from the developmental systems perspective, is the dissolution of ontological mind-body dualism. This in turn allows for a methodological complementation of the biological and phenomenological approaches to knowledge. New research strategies that may help to resolve chronic fatigue syndrome, grounded in the revised perspective on individual development, are suggested. (shrink)

Background: Compassion fatigue is recognized as impacting the health and effectiveness of healthcare providers, and consequently, patient care. Compassion fatigue is distinct from “burnout.” Reliable measurement tools, such as the Professional Quality of Life scale, have been developed to measure the prevalence, and predict risk of compassion fatigue. This study reviews the prevalence of compassion fatigue among healthcare practitioners, and relationships to demographic variables. Methods: A systematic review was conducted using key words in MEDLINE, PubMed, and (...) Ovid databases. Data were extracted from a total of 71 articles meeting inclusion criteria, from studies measuring compassion fatigue in healthcare providers using a validated instrument. Quantitative and qualitative data were extracted and compiled by three independent reviewers into an evidence table that included basic study characteristics, study strength and quality determination, measurements of compassion fatigue, and general findings. Meta-analysis, where data allowed, was stratified by Professional Quality of Life version, heterogeneity was quantified, and pooled means were reported with 95% confidence interval. A table of major study characteristics and results was created. Ethical consideration: This paper contains no primary data obtained directly from research participants. Data obtained from previously published resources have been acknowledged within references. Psychological distress, particularly compassion fatigue, can be insidious, no health profession is immune, and may significantly impact the ability to provide care. Results: A total of 71 studies were included. Compassion fatigue was reported across all practitioner groups studied. Relationships to most demographic variables such as years of experience and specialty were either not statistically significant or unclear. Variability in reporting of Professional Quality of Life results was found. Interpretation: Compassion fatigue exists across diverse practitioner groups. Prevalence is highly variable, and its relationship with demographic, personal, and/or professional variables is inconsistent. Questions are raised about how to mitigate compassion fatigue. (shrink)

The scientific and practical fields—especially high-performance sports—increasingly request a stronger focus be placed on individual athletes in human movement science research. Machine learning methods have shown efficacy in this context by identifying the unique movement patterns of individuals and distinguishing their intra-individual changes over time. The objective of this investigation is to analyze biomechanically described movement patterns during the fatigue-related accumulation process within a single training session of a high number of repeated executions of a ballistic sports movement—specifically, the (...) frontal foot kick (mae-geri) in karate—in expert athletes. The two leading research questions presented for consideration are (1) Can characteristics of individual movement patterns be observed throughout the entire training session despite continuous changes, i.e., even as fatigue-related processes increase? and (2) How do intra-individual movement patterns change as fatigue-related processes increase throughout a training session? Sixteen expert karatekas performed 606 frontal foot kicks directed toward an imaginary target. The kicks were performed in nine sets at 80% (K-80) of the self-experienced maximal intensity. In addition, six kicks at maximal intensity (K-100) were performed after each of the nine sets. Between the sets, the participants took a 90-s break. Three-dimensional full-body kinematic data of all kicks were recorded with 10 infrared cameras. The normalized waveforms of nine upper- and lower-body joint angles were classified using a supervised machine learning method (support vector machine). The results of the classification revealed a disjunct distinction between the kinematic movement patterns of individual athletes. The identification of unique movement patterns of individual athletes was independent of the intensity and the degree of fatigue-related processes. In other words, even with the accumulation of fatigue-related processes, the unique movement patterns of an individual athlete can be clearly identified. During the training session, changes in intra-individual movement patterns could also be detected, indicating the occurrence of adaptations in individual movement patterns throughout the fatigue-related accumulation process. The results suggest that these adaptations can be modeled in terms of changes in patterns rather than increasing variance. Practical consequences are critically discussed. (shrink)

Mental fatigue (MF) jeopardizes performance and safety through a variety of cognitive impairments and according to the complexity loss theory, should represent “complexity loss” in electroencephalogram (EEG). However, the studies are few and inconsistent concerning the relationship between MF and loss of complexity, probably because of the susceptibility of brain waves to noise. In this study, MF was induced in thirteen male college students by a simulated flight task. Before and at the end of the task, spontaneous EEG and (...) auditory steady-state response (ASSR) were recorded and instantaneous frequency variation (IFV) in alpha rhythm was extracted and analyzed by multiscale entropy (MSE) analysis. The results show that there were significant differences in IFV in alpha rhythm either from spontaneous EEG or from ASSR for all subjects. Therefore, the proposed method can be effective in revealing the complexity loss caused by MF in spontaneous EEG and ASSR, which may serve as a promising analyzing method to mark mild mental impairments. (shrink)

The philosophical analysis of trauma has grown over the last ten years due to our need to elucidate the lived experience endured by an increasing number of human beings undergoing forced migration, abuses, war crimes, and traumatizing situations. The irreducibility of trauma renders the task of care ethics more and more difficult. Yet, this paper argues that a phenomenological analysis of the care relation with traumatized patients can help elucidate the inter-affective dynamics at stake in such encounters. First, I will (...) analyze the phenomenon of compassion fatigue and show how it differs from “emotional contagion” and how it relates to empathy. Relying on phenomenological approaches to empathy, I will assess the kind of “affective sharing” entailed by compassion fatigue. In the second section, I will reframe this conception of empathy by uncovering the existential feeling of vulnerability and the pre-reflective bodily resonance that frames our encounter with others. In the final section, I will argue that vicarious traumatization could be overcome thanks to a “creative kind” of compassion which links the sense of self to the sense of agency, the act of caring with the quest for justice, in a constant effort to restore balance through affective sharing and mutual recognition. (shrink)

BackgroundThe Covid-19 pandemic has impacted compassion fatigue and the mental health of health care providers, particularly midwives and nurses. Although there are studies involving health workers...

Fatigue and increased fatigability occur as symptoms in almost every medical and psychiatric condition, as well as being common reactions to non pathological physical and psychological strain and stress. We will attempt to clarify the semantics of the terms "fatigue" and "fatigability", and we will put forward the hypothesis that the special kind of mental fatigability which characterises many cases of mild to moderate dysfunction of the brain is functional in a sense that it represents an overload of (...) pathological information (from the injured area) to higher cognitive mechanisms which may themselves be anatomically and physiologically intact. (shrink)

Simultaneous bimanual movements are not merely the sum of two unimanual movements. Here, we considered the unimanual/bimanual motor system as comprising three components: unimanual-specific, bimanual-specific, and overlapping. If the force-generating system controlling the same limb differs between unimanual and bimanual movements, unimanual exercise would be expected to fatigue the unimanual-specific and overlapping parts in the force-generating system but not the bimanual-specific part. Therefore, we predicted that the decrease in bimanual force generation induced by unimanual neuromuscular fatigue would be (...) smaller than the decrease in unimanual force generation. Sixteen healthy right-handed adults performed unimanual and bimanual maximal handgrip measurements before and after a submaximal fatiguing handgrip task. In the fatigue task, participants were instructed to maintain unimanual handgrip force at 50% of their maximal handgrip force until the time to task failure. Each participant performed this task in a left-hand fatigue condition and a right-hand fatigue condition, in a random order. Although the degree of neuromuscular fatigue was comparable in both conditions, as expected, the decrease in bimanual right handgrip force was significantly smaller than those during unimanual right performance in the RF condition, but not in the LF condition. These results indicate that for the right-hand, neuromuscular fatigue in unimanual handgrip does not completely affect simultaneous bimanual handgrip. Regarding the underlying mechanisms, we propose that although neuromuscular fatigue caused by unimanual handgrip reduces the motor output of unimanual-specific and overlapping parts in the force-generating system, when simultaneous bimanual handgrip is performed, the overlapping part and the bimanual-specific part generate motor output, thus decreasing the force reduction. (shrink)

Science once had an unshakable faith in its ability to bring the forces of nature—even human nature—under control. In this wide-ranging book Anson Rabinbach examines how developments in physics, biology, medicine, psychology, politics, and art employed the metaphor of the working body as a human motor. From nineteenth-century theories of thermodynamics and political economy to the twentieth-century ideals of Taylorism and Fordism, Rabinbach demonstrates how the utopian obsession with energy and fatigue shaped social thought across the ideological spectrum.

The pastoral ministry of caregiving inevitably implies a cost. The spiritual ethos in the Christian ministry implies a huge sacrifice. Dietrich Bonhoeffer described this ethos as ‘the cost of discipleship’. Very specifically in the case of unexpected and the so-called ‘undeserved modes of suffering’, the meaning framework of the caregiver is being interpenetrated, causing a kind of ‘depleted sense of being’. It is argued here that an appropriate diagnosis, and a description of the phenomenon of compassion fatigue, can help (...) caregivers to better understand their sense of being depleted. Instead of leaving the pastoral ministry, this can help them to attend anew to their spiritual capacity. In this regard, a theology of compassion, framed by theopaschitic theology, can help pastors to become ‘healed’ in order to re-enter the pastoral ministry and regain a sense of parrhēsia. (shrink)

오늘날 현대인은 만성 피로로 지쳐 있다. 한병철은 이러한 현대사회의 모습을 피로사회로 규정하고, 그 원인이 과도한 자기 긍정의 성과 주체에서 비롯된다고 진단한다. 과도한 피로로 인한 소진증후군과 같은 정신적 질병은 일 중독의 도핑 사회에서 성과 주체가 보여주는 필연적 현상이다. 그러나 현대사회에서 피로의 탓을 오로지 성과 주체의 내적 원인으로만 돌리는 것은 정당하지 않다. 왜냐하면, 성과 주체 자체가 이미 자기 성취와 자기 발견과 전혀 무관한 노동만을 암암리에 강요하는 사회의 외적 지배구조 아래 놓여 있기 때문이다. 이 글은 오늘날 질병으로서 인식되는 현대인의 만성적 피로가 근본적으로 어디에 (...) 기인하고 있는지를 특히 노동(일)과 관련하여 다시 검토하고, 철학상담의 치유의 관점에서 피로사회를 극복하는 대안으로서 삶의 태도와 방식의 변화인 ‘성과 주체’의 삶에서 ‘열매 주체’의 삶으로의 변화를 제안한다. 이때 생존과 가치 실현의 목적 외에 우리가 가진 노동에 대한 잘못된 관념과 개념을 교정하고, 노동의 세계관에 대한 새로운 해석을 통해서 자기변형을 꾀하는 것이 무엇보다도 중요하다. 오늘날 현대인은 바쁜 일상 안에서 온전히 자기 존재로서 주체적 삶을 살지 못한다. 성과를 부추기는 사회에 매몰된 채 병적인 과잉 긍정의 모습을 보이는 성과 주체의 삶이 결코 주체성 있는 삶이라 할 수는 없다. 현대인의 삶에서 주체성 있는 삶은 가능한 한 성과를 내는 데 있지 않고 오히려 자기를 돌아보고 자기를 해방하는 ‘여유’에 있다. 이런 여유로움 속에서 우리는 비로소 진정한 자기를 발견할 수 있기 때문이다. 결코 충족될 수 없는 성과 욕망에 무방비적으로 노출된 사회에서 성과 주체가 자기 착취의 가학적 모습을 띤다면, 열매 주체는 성과에 집착하지 않는 여유로움을 통해서 해방과 자유를 얻는다. (shrink)

IntroductionThe COVID-19 pandemic was soon declared a global health threat and had significant economic and health implications. Unprecedented government measures brought massive shifts in teaching-learning pedagogy in nursing to curb the infection. The study was conducted to explore the predictors of pandemic fatigue among nursing undergraduates and mediating role of individual resilience and coping styles during the third wave in India.MethodsThis online survey included 256 undergraduate nursing students studying at Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital in North India. Lockdown/Pandemic Fatigue (...) Questionnaire, Brief Resilience Scale, and Coping Behavior Questionnaire were used to collect the information. Appropriate descriptive and inferential statistics were applied to compute the results.ResultsNursing undergraduates reported a moderate level of fatigue during the restrictions imposed at the time of the third wave. Students’ year of study, tested positive during pandemic, and post-COVID-19 hospitalization were found associated with higher fatigue status. Advanced age and higher personal resilience status were associated with lower fatigue levels. Resilience status and second year of study were reported as independent predictors of pandemic fatigue in students.ConclusionFindings suggest that lockdown-related fatigue was common in nursing undergraduates. Considering negative consequences on mental health, routine psychosocial screening of the nursing students should be conducted. Recommending stress-relieving measures should be enforced to help nursing undergraduates to combat lockdown-induced exhaustion. (shrink)

The present study examined the distinct configurations, or profiles, taken by work fatigue dimensions among samples of military and civilian employees. We also tested profile similarity across these two samples of employees. In addition, this research documented the relations between the identified work fatigue profiles, one predictor variable, and a series of attitudinal outcomes among military employees. Six profiles of employees characterized by different levels of global and specific work fatigue were identified using latent profile analyses: Low (...) Fatigue, Physically and Emotionally Depleted, Emotionally Depleted, Globally and Mentally Depleted, Globally and Emotionally Depleted, and Balanced. In both samples, employees corresponding to the Balanced profile displayed average levels of global and specific work fatigue. However, this profile slightly differed across sample, as indicated by the observation of work fatigue levels that were slightly higher among the military than among civilians. Militaries’ perceptions of psychological empowerment were significantly related to their likelihood of belonging to all profiles. In turn, militaries’ career satisfaction, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions were also found to differ as a function of profile membership. (shrink)

Fantasies have the power in the very midst of political communities, consciously and unconsciously alike, to suppress internal antagonisms in times of crises. More specifically, they help to blur aporias of a community’s ideological structures by invoking a common sense that reconstitutes the community, similar to an act of religious conversion. Their impact on the “space of reasons” is analyzed in this article because fantasies, and specifically excessive and radical fantasies, suspend the game of giving and asking for reasons. They (...) do so in order to ground premises of contestation in the background of communal reason via an emotional and secret “code” of what it means to be a “we.” Totalitarian, monarchical, and democratic societies need this “code” to purge society of the pure formalities of political reason, or, in other words: to get rid of fantasy fatigue. (shrink)

The event of the pandemic that started in 2020 fed an affective phenomenon known as pandemic fatigue, medically near to “chronic fatigue syndrome”. Psychologi- cal explanation of the phenomenon provides a first approach that is enriched with phenomenological description and analysis of it as existential feeling in the present. This term stresses the bodily reference of the kind of existential moods displayed by Heidegger and contributes to a better description of the fatigue phenomenon relying on Levinas’ study. (...) Present and profound fatigue is therefore shown as a feeling of tiredness that ties existence to a no-being-possible or no-being-able for oneself to do what it was possible before, i.e. in the pre-pandemic past. Besides the description, phenomenological analysis of the bond between profound boredom —as studied by Heidegger— and pandemic existential fatigue stresses different levels in the ontological understanding of this last one and its harmful feature. (shrink)

Background Nurses provide care to meet the complex needs of patients in the increasing workload in the health system and are at risk of compassion fatigue. The concept of compassion fatigue has begun drawing attention in the last decade, as it negatively affects nurses' physical and mental health, job performance and satisfaction, and therefore patient care quality. Objectives This study was to examine compassion fatigue and predictive factors in paediatric surgery nurses. Participants and research context The study (...) was cross-sectional, predictive and quantitative. It was conducted with the 135 paediatric surgery nurses. The data were sent to the email addresses of the members via Google Survey. Research data were collected with the Nurse Information Form, Compassion Fatigue Scale, Life Satisfaction Scale and Multidimensional Perceived Social Support Scale. Ethical considerations After obtaining the approval of the University’s ethics committee, the study was carried out after obtaining participants’ informed written and verbal consent. Results There was a difference between the level of compassion fatigue according to the paediatric surgery unit that worked the longest and the thought of changing their profession. Burn unit nurses and nurses who were considering changing professions have higher compassion fatigue scores. When the predictors of compassion fatigue were examined, the thought of changing the nursing profession and life satisfaction were significant predictors of compassion fatigue. The thought of changing the nursing profession and life satisfaction explained 22% of compassion fatigue. The same variables and the longest working period of the paediatric surgery unit were the estimators of the level of occupational burnout; explaining 29% of occupational burnout. Conclusions Compassion fatigue, life satisfaction and perceived social support of paediatric surgery nurses are moderate. Compassion fatigue is affected by working time, the thought of changing the profession, life satisfaction and perceived social support. (shrink)

One of the great problems of caregivers and health professionals in recent times has been the so-called compassion fatigue and its association with burnout syndrome. Another pole of compassion has been described in terms of compassion satisfaction. Both propositions could be problematic in the caregiving setting. This is an analytical reflective article that through an apparent aporia tries to problematize and propose a theoretical synthesis that allows to denote compassion as a virtue in Aristotelian terms. To this end, it (...) resorts to etymologies, translations and mainly to the classical theoretical references regarding compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction and, of course, Aristotelian ethics. This is a theoretical bet that leaves open the discussion regarding the dichotomies compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction; apathy and hyperpathy; and proposes to rethink compassion as a virtue, a reasoned middle ground, contextualized in the framework of care between two possible excesses. (shrink)