The effect of the short-term and long-term compassion fatigue resiliency program on the quality of life, perceived stress and psychological resilience of oncology-haematology nurses

Abstract

Background: This study was carried out as randomized‐controlled, longitudinal interventional to determinewhether there was a difference between themean scores of compassion fatigue (CF), burnout (BO), compassion satisfaction (CS), perceived stress (PS) and psychological resilience (PR) after applying the short‐term and long‐term'Compassion Fatigue Resiliency Program' for nurses working in the field of oncology‐hematology. Methods: The sample of the study consisted of oncology‐hematology nurses working in two private hospitals, one university hospital. Hospitals were randomly assigned to experiment I (n:34), experiment II (n: 49) and control groups (n: 42). Short‐term (two days, five hours per day) program implemented to experiment I, long‐term (five weeks, 2 hours a week) program implemented to experiment II and no any intervention implemented to control group. Measurements were made pre‐intervention, post‐intervention, third month, sixth month and first year. The data were collected by personal information form, professional quality of life scale‐IV, PS scale, and PR scale for adults. SPSS 24 package program was used to analyze the data of the study. Primary research hypotheses were tested with multilevel models (MLM). Results: There was no statistically significant difference between the mean scores of CF, BO, PS and PR of the nurses in the short‐term, long‐term and control groups. The mean compassion satisfaction score of the nurses in the short‐term and long‐term education group was statistically significantly higher than in the control group. The mean CS scores of the nurses in both the short and long‐term education groups were statistically significantly higher in the sixth month and first year follow‐up measurements than in the pre‐intervention period. Conclusions: In this study, considering the effects of long‐term and short‐term education on CF, BO, CS, perceived stress and PR of nurses, it can be said that these two educations have the same effect on CS. It is the first study with randomized‐controlled method, including the follow‐up of up to a year. Doing new studies that are revealing the effect of this education can be suggested.