Empathy Fatigue: Healing the Mind, Body, and Spirit of Professional Counselors

"We Need to Talk About Empathy": Dutch Humanist Chaplains' Perspectives on Empathy's Functions, Downsides, and Limitations in Chaplaincy Care

This paper investigates the functions, downsides, and limitations of empathy in chaplaincy care. Data were collected from 20 humanist chaplains working in health care, prison, and military settings using semi-structured interviews. According to the participants, empathy is at the heart of their profession but has disadvantages as well. The analysis yields seven major functions of empathy with corresponding downsides and limitations: (1) to connect, (2) to understand, (3) to guide, (4) to acknowledge, (5) to motivate, (6) to inspire, and (7) to humanize. We argue for a need to "talk about empathy" since despite its importance and challenges, there is little professional and academic discussion about empathy in chaplaincy care. We hope that the findings of this study can function as starting points for the discussion and thus contribute to the ongoing professionalization of chaplaincy care. To that end, we propose three topics for further reflection and conversation.

Moving Crisis to Opportunities: A Corporate Perspective on the Impact of Compassionate Empathic Behaviour on the Well-Being of Employees

The recent raging pandemic has disrupted the world economy in a humongous way causing socio-psychological stressors affecting the mental well-being of employees. The fear of losing jobs due to economic shutdowns, or facing challenges of digitisation of the workplace, or fear of contaminating illness generated a feeling of despair and panic to more serious paranoia behaviour amongst the employees. The present study aims at investigating how did the leadership use prosocial empathic skills during this pandemic to manage the mental well-being of their respective employees, so that they are motivated and engaged for meaningful performance. The major themes that emerged from the structured interviews of the apex leadership were (1) compassionate empathic behaviour impacts the employee motivation and performance; (2) open, honest and timely vertical communication promotes trust and bonding; (3) support for employee autonomy impacts their well-being; (4) encouraging competence and self-efficacy in employees; (5) promoting positive and healthy relationships by displaying compassionate empathy positively impacts mental health and thereby employee performance during crisis. Right from providing unified Communication platform, to displaying empathic leadership, the apex leadership unanimously believes that people are their best assets and if managed well in the crisis can help them stem the storm successfully.

Nurses' Empathetic Behaviors: The Direct and Indirect Effect of Their Spiritual Orientation

Spirituality and its role in nurses' performance has gained much attention from the nursing researchers. But there is still some ambiguity about its role in improving the nurses' empathetic behaviors and factors that mediate this relation. To fill these research gaps, a sample of 247 Muslim nurses in a hospital at Shiraz, Iran, were selected and studied. Data were gathered by distributing the standard questionnaires among all of the nurses. Also, structural equation modeling and ANOVA test were used to analyze the data. It was found that nurses' spiritual orientation has a positive effect on their psychological capital and empathetic behaviors. Also, it was found that their work engagement has been affected by their level of psychological capital. Moreover, there was a significant difference between the spirituality of single and married nurses, in a way that married nurses were more spiritual. As a conclusion, it can be said that nurses' empathetic behaviors are a reflection of their spiritual orientation and marriage status.

An evolutionary concept analysis of secondary traumatic stress in nurses

PURPOSE

The purpose of this article is to provide conceptual clarification of secondary traumatic stress (STS) in nurses.

BACKGROUND

As an empathetic helping profession, nurses are at increased risk for STS. Interchangeable usage of related terms among multidisciplinary literature has resulted in lack of conceptual clarity resulting in conflation of terms. Conceptual clarity is necessary for a foundation for further research on treatment.

METHODS

Rodgers' evolutionary model of concept analysis.

RESULTS

Nurses are predisposed to STS due to exposure, empathy, bonding, and personal factors. Essential attributes were found to be posttraumatic stress disorder-like symptoms, biological symptoms, social symptoms, and psychological symptoms. Resultant consequences included an altered worldview, interpersonal difficulties, and decreased occupational commitment.

CONCLUSION

This concept analysis, the first focusing on STS, provides conceptual clarity and a concept map of STS within the nursing population.

Residential Counselors and Self Care: A Retrospective Qualitative Study of Archival Interview Data

Objectives:

The purpose of this qualitative inquiry was to understand the barriers related to effective self-care for master’s level residential counselors.

Methods:

Archival interview transcripts of 77 residential counselors were analyzed utilizing a social constructivist lens to identify perceived barriers to effective self-care. Themes related to levels of self-care influences including individual, supervisory, and organizational barriers to effective self-care emerged.

Results:

Results reflected those themes specifically by indicating that counselors can take steps to actively engage in wellness pursuits to promote self-care. Similarly, supervisors and organizations can enhance or impede a counselor’s ability to engage in self-care.

Conclusions:

Counselors should select work settings that have both supervisory and organizational supports for self-care. This includes encouraging a culture of wellness through support, development, coverage for time off, and other related areas. Implications show that practices and policies are needed to promote effective self-care across individual, supervisory, and agency domains.

Designing Nursing Care Practices Complemented by Robots: Ethical Implications and Application of Caring Frameworks

The nurse of today must be able to master a variety of technologies. This article will discuss the current state of robots, explore the ethical framework of the Care-Centered Value Sensitive Design (CCVSD) and the caring theory of Nursing As Caring theory as it relates to the sacred nurse-patient relationship. Integrating both an ethical and caring framework will serve the nursing profession as it wrestles with the role and function robots can and will be used in clinical practice in order to protect the nurse–patient relationship. As technology advances, we must remember some human experiences are not programmable.

Dear Mental Health Practitioners, Take Care of Yourselves: a Literature Review on Self-Care

Stress, burnout, and professional impairment are prevalent among mental health professionals and can have a negative impact on their clinical work, whilst engagement in self-care can help promote therapist well-being. This literature review examines the role of self-care in the promotion of well-being among mental health practitioners. Specifically, empirical research is presented in relation to specific domains of self-care practice, including awareness, balance, flexibility, physical health, social support, and spirituality. Findings from this review underscore the importance of taking a proactive approach to self-care and, in particular, integrating self-care directly into clinical training programs and into the quality assurance processes of professional organizations within the field of mental health.

Moral Enhancement Should Target Self-Interest and Cognitive Capacity

Current suggestions for capacities that should be targeted for moral enhancement has centered on traits like empathy, fairness or aggression. The literature, however, lacks a proper model for understanding the interplay and complexity of moral capacities, which limits the practicability of proposed interventions. In this paper, I integrate some existing knowledge on the nature of human moral behavior and present a formal model of prosocial motivation. The model provides two important results regarding the most friction-free route to moral enhancement. First, we should consider decreasing self-interested motivation rather than increasing prosociality directly. Second, this should be complemented with cognitive enhancement. These suggestions are tested against existing and emerging evidence on cognitive capacity, mindfulness meditation and the effects of psychedelic drugs and are found to have sufficient grounding for further theoretical and empirical exploration. Furthermore, moral effects of the latter two are hypothesized to result from a diminished sense of self with subsequent reductions in self-interest.

Addressing Burnout in Oncology: Why Cancer Care Clinicians Are At Risk, What Individuals Can Do, and How Organizations Can Respond

Despite their benevolent care of others, today, more than ever, the cancer care professional who experiences overwhelming feelings of exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy is in grave jeopardy of developing burnout. Clinicians are repeatedly physically and emotionally exposed to exceedingly long hours in direct care with seriously ill patients/families, limited autonomy over daily responsibilities, endless electronic documentation, and a shifting medical landscape. The physical and emotional well-being of the cancer care clinician is critical to the impact on quality care, patient satisfaction, and overall success of their organizations. The prevention of burnout as well as targeting established burnout need to be proactively addressed at the individual level and organizational level. In fact, confronting burnout and promoting wellness are the shared responsibility of both oncology clinicians and their organizations. From an individual perspective, oncology clinicians must be empowered to play a crucial role in enhancing their own wellness by identification of burnout symptoms in both themselves and their colleagues, learning resilience strategies (e.g., mindful self-compassion), and cultivating positive relationships with fellow clinician colleagues. At the organizational level, leadership must recognize the importance of oncology clinician well-being; engage leaders and physicians in collaborative action planning, improve overall practice environment, and provide institutional wellness resources to physicians. These effective individual and organizational interventions are crucial for the prevention and improvement of overall clinician wellness and must be widely and systematically integrated into oncology care.

Emotional Intelligence and the Counselor: Examining the Relationship of Trait Emotional Intelligence to Counselor Burnout

Given the intimate and emotional nature of counseling, counselors are often highly susceptible to counselor burnout. Scholars have reported on how important it is for counselors to find strategies that mitigate stressful scenarios and prevent burnout. Emotional intelligence could be a preventative factor. This article describes a correlational investigation that examined the relationship of practicing mental health and marriage and family counselors' (N = 539) emotional intelligence to their degree of burnout. The results from this study indicate that participants' level of emotional intelligence negatively predicted their level of burnout (r = −.62, p < .001; 38% of the variance explained). This article provides a description of our findings, suggestions for future research, and implications for counselors.

Emotional Intelligence and Mental Health: Stress and Symptom Reporting Pathways

This study examines the pathways through which mood perception affects perceived stress and symptom reporting among undergraduate students. It examines depression, anxiety, positive affect, and negative affect as mediators between a) emotional intelligence (EI) and b) perceived stress and symptom reporting. Results indicated that on the EI measure used in this study, the Trait Meta-mood Scale (TMMS) subscales, Attention was not related to perceived stress or symptom reporting. Mood Repair and Clarity were significantly and inversely related to perceived stress and symptom reporting. Anxiety and depression were the primary mediators in these relationships.