ASSOCIATION OF SPECIALTY AND WORKING HOURS WITH COMPASSION FATIGUE

Working Hours And Compassion Fatigue

Abstract

Objective: To find out association of speciality and working hours with compassion fatigue.
Study Design: Cross sectional comparative study.
Place and Duration of Study: Military Hospital and Combined Military Hospital Rawalpindi, Combined Military Hospital Sialkot, from December 2013 to July 2014.
Material and Methods: Fifty four doctors from departments of Medicine, Surgery, Anesthesia and Gynaecology participated in the study. Other health care related personnel, not directly related to patient care, were excluded from the study. The data collection tool was a questionnaire “Professional Quality of Life Measure version 5”. Data was analysed by SPSS version 22. Chi Square test for goodness of fit was used to determine difference in the frequency distribution of various categories of a single variable whereas Chi square test for independence was used to find association between two categorical variables. The p-value was kept at < 0.05 for significance.
Results: Results showed 11 females and 43 males with mean age of 37.69 ± 9.72 years. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.81. Eleven participants (20.4%) showed low compassion fatigue, 37 (68.5%) showed average whereas only 6 participants (11.1%) showed high compassion fatigue scores and the difference was significant (p-value < 0.001). Working hours were associated with compassion fatigue (p-value = 0.03) but speciality was not (p-value = 0.41).
Conclusion: Chances of suffering from compassion fatigue are significantly higher if working hours are 12 or more, however the disorder is not associated with speciality.