After serving in the Vietnam War, Charles Figley became interested in the concept of trauma—not only the lasting psychological wounds that people experienced after living through traumatic events ...

The 20th-century French philosopher Simone Weil once said that compassion was an impossibility. She said it is "a more astounding miracle than walking on water." The word she used for meeting the ...

Compassion fatigue used to be a problem that was most commonly seen among health care professionals. Because their work puts them in situations where they commonly see or hear about ongoing and ...

Compassion fatigue can be physical, emotional, or spiritual exhaustion that overtakes the otherwise positive and fulfilling experience of helping others when we over-empathize (Figley, 2002a). Often ...

How Compassion Fatigue Can Overwhelm Charity Workers — and What to Do About It the International Traumatology Institute, measures levels of compassion fatigue, burnout, and satisfaction and can give ...

In the field of palliative of care, there is ever-increasing interest in the concept of compassion fatigue. Related topics include stress, burnout, self-care, and work-life balance. Little attention ...

Whether good or bad, we all experience stress. This is particularly true for professional caregivers, especially as decreased funding can lead to higher caseloads and longer hours for many caregivers.

When tragedy takes the world stage, it can quickly become part of every conversation. But as much as it may feel imperative to stay fully engaged in the tragic updates and charged conversations about ...

Last year, Eric Singhi, MD, a thoracic medical oncologist at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, noticed a shift in his team. The small band of four clinicians, once motivated and enthusiastic, were ...

in Virginia, traveled to northern New Jersey to consult at the Bon Secours hospitals in Hoboken and Jersey City. She wasn’t there to help take care of the hospitals’ patients, but rather their staff ...

Ministry compassion takes a toll. Frederick Buechner wrote, “Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it’s like to live inside somebody else’s skin.”[i] Every pastor knows the slump ...