Abstract:
Background: The nursing profession requires chronic exposure to the suffering of others
and puts nurses at risk of developing compassion fatigue, which has negative impacts on
nurses' well-being, patients, and the health care system. It leads to poor quality care, patient
mortality, and a financial burden on the healthcare system. However, there is no evidence
on the level of compassion fatigue among nurses working in the our country.
Objectives: To assess compassion fatigue and associated factors among nurses in Jimma
Zone public hospitals, southwest Ethiopia, 2023.
Method: A facility-based cross-sectional study was employed among 422 nurses working in
Jimma Zone public hospitals from May 25 to June 25, 2023. A systematic sampling technique
was employed to select respondents. Data were collected using pretested self-administered
questionnaires. Professional Quality of Life Scale was used for measuring compassion
fatigues. The data were cleaned, entered into Epi-data-4.6, and exported to Statistical
Package for Social Science-25 for analysis. Simple and multiple linear regression were done
to identify factors associated with compassion fatigue. Variables with a p-value of ≤0.05 at
95%CI were considered statistically significant variables.
Result: From a total of 422 respondents, 412(97.6 %) of them gave complete responses. 47%
of respondents, had a moderate level of compassion fatigue. Variables like total work
experience (β =-0.04; 95%CI(-0.06, -0.01);p= 0.005), perceived social support (β = -0.13;
95%CI(-0.17, -0.08); p<0.001), self-compassion (β = -0.08; 95%CI(-0.14, -0.03); p =
0.004), support seeking (β = -0.23; 95%CI(-0.42, -0.04); p = 0.016), sleep hours (β = 0.47;
95%CI(0.36, 0.57); p<0.001), emergency ward (β = 0.33; 95%CI(0.18, 0.49); p = <0.001),
intensive care unit (β = 0.36; 95%CI(0.19, 0.53); p<0.001) and pediatric ward (β = 0.23;
95%CI(0.10, 0.36); p = 0.001) were signifantly associated with compassion fatigue.
Conclusion and Recommendation: Despite majority of respondents had a moderate level,
26.5% of them still suffered from a high level of compassion fatigue. The factors associated
were work experience, perceived social support, self-compassion, coping strategies, work
unit, and sleep hours. Therefore, stakeholders including hospital managers should implement
targeted strategies like taining on increasing coping strategy, self-compassion and creating
culture of team work among nurses to prevent the occurrence of compassion fatigue.
