Compassion Fatigue, Empathy, and Emotional Contagion in Nursing Students

Background: Health professionals accompany patients with pain and suffering on their journey. Understanding the effect of empathy and emotional contagion, which is supposed to affect this journey, on compassion fatigue can help determine strategies to protect health professionals.

Aim: The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship and effect level among compassion fatigue, empathy, and emotional contagion in fourth-year nursing students.

Methods: The study was carried out between March 03, 2021, and March 15, 2021, with 207 students. In addition, it was carried out using the cross-sectional design, which is included in the scope of quantitative research methods. In the study, a further sample selection was not conducted and it was aimed to reach the entire population. Necessary permissions for the study have been obtained. The data were collected using “Introductory Information Form,” “The Compassion Fatigue-Short Scale,” “The Toronto Empathy Scale,” and “The emotional contagion scale.” The data were analyzed by Kolmogorov–Smirnov, kurtosis, skewness, Mann–Whitney U test, Kruskal–Wallis test, and Spearman test. In addition, regression tests were applied for relational questions.

Results: About 91.8% of the participants were women and the average age was 22.10 ± 1.27. While compassion fatigue had a significant relationship with emotional contagion (P <.001), it does not have a significant relationship with empathy (P >.05). There is a significant relationship between emotional contagion and empathy. Empathy and emotional contagion had a significant effect on compassion fatigue (r = 0.411, P <.001). In addition, it was seen that 10.9% of the variance in compassion fatigue was explained by these 2 variables.

Conclusion: It was revealed that nursing students experienced compassion fatigue as a result of interaction with patients and their relatives during their clinical practice. Therefore, it is thought that empathic communication skills should be improved in nursing students without being under the effect of emotional contagion and without being harmed.