Secondary traumatization in healthcare professions: A continuum on compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma and burnout

Abstract

Secondary traumatization has implications for healthcare professionals and the quality of care, this construct including compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and burnout, but they are distinct different constructs. The aim of this review is to examine the psychological factors that characterize the domains of secondary traumatization, differentiating them from compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma and burnout in healthcare professionals. We identified eligible papers, a systematic literature search on PubMed has been performed, 681 publications have been found, the total number of relevant publications was reduced to 18. According to the examined literature, this situation may be highly distressing for healthcare assistants, and entails a series of negative consequences. This review suggested that healthcare professionals are at risk of secondary traumatization, for the impact of personal distress, and a variety of stressful factors and negative affect promote this condition. The distress that results from dissatisfaction, and is associated with negative cognitions and negative mood. Finally, the psychological variables of the quality of professional life identified by scientific literature are eight and include: compassion satisfation and fatigue, burnout, distress, self-compassion, psychological inflexibility, empathy, ability to take another people’s perspective.