Combating Compassion Fatigue

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One of the major warning signs of compassion fatigue, is that it healthcare provider will become more irritable with small things that happen in their life, causing them to overreact due to their nervous system exhaustion. The irritability that is a warning sign of compassion fatigue, will usually result in increased numbers of arguments and other confrontations with those that are closest to them, which invariably includes their family members. The increased irritability that individuals feel as a result of compassion fatigue, will also make these individuals less able to stay calm and collected under stressful conditions, which will invariably detrimentally affect their work performance, as well as their social interactions with their coworkers and supervisors. Another major warning sign of compassion fatigue, is the increased anxiety that healthcare professionals feel when they must deal with patients' emotional issues, due to the fact that the healthcare professionals start to develop an internal fear of having to deal with patient emotional issues,due to the dramatic increase in the level of stress that dealing with these emotional issues has on the healthcare professional. Another major warning sign of compassion fatigue, is that healthcare practitioners such as nurses will start to feel emotionally and physically drained due to the vast amount of energy that these individuals experience in providing for the emotional and physical care of patients, these individuals will eventually start to display physical fatigue, which results in these individuals feeling lethargic, as well as not having enough energy to complete their daily tasks in an efficient and effective manner. The physical fatigue that these individuals start to feel, will also start to affect these individual's lives outside of the healthcare setting, due to the fact that these individuals would tend to have less energy for attending to the daily activities that are necessary ...