Compassion Fatigue and Burnout in Nursing: Enhancing Professional Quality of Life

by Vidette Todaro-Franceschi

"Dr. Todaro-Franceschi calls us to look with open eyes, open hearts, and open minds at the good, the bad, the ugly, and the ugliest in health care so that together we can cultivate a healthcare world in which compassion prevails and our shared humanity is embraced... It is up to all of us to hold and safeguard each other in this sacred work. Dr. Todaro-Franceschi helps us in this mission through this extraordinary book."

Mary Koloroutis, RN, MSN

CEO Creative Health Care Management, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Co-Creator of the Relationship-Based Care Model

In this second edition of her seminal text, Dr. Todaro-Franceschi offers new insights on professional quality of life, incorporating current practice, research literature, and examples to show how contentment and happiness of the nursing workforce is related to quality of care. The book provides practical strategies for dealing with a myriad of issues, including compassion fatigue, burnout, moral distress, caring for the dying, PTSD, and workplace violence. This resource will help empower nurses so they can create a more compassionate work environment.

Written by an acknowledged expert in end of life education, professional quality of life, and clinical leadership, the text addresses the complex nature of well-being in the nursing workforce. Supported by research but written from a holistic and personal perspective, the text includes case studies and exercises that will help the reader to identify negative patterns and explore ways to find purpose in one's life.

New to the Second Edition:


Expanded emphasis on how workforce well-being contributes to care quality
Updated resources and information on national nursing initiatives related to professional quality of life
New chapter on workplace violence (incivility, bullying and mobbing)
New chapter on education related to improving PQOL and work environment
Provides a Nurse Leaders Resource Toolkit to guide staff education
Key Features:


Articulates an ethic of care developed from a transdisciplinary perspective
Increases nurse awareness of issues that might be hindering their PQOL
Provides strategies for enhancing staff contentment and productivity, thereby promoting a healthy work environment
Includes real-life examples from critical care, end-of-life care, hospice, oncology, and more
Assists nurses with grief healing

Genres: Nursing

322 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Laurie Barkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book for anyone in nursing. Our nursing goals have been impeded by poisonous work environments and resource deficits—-among other factors—-that have contributed to compassion fatigue, burnout, and large numbers of nurses leaving nursing. To counter these environmental stressors, Dr. Franceschi-Todaro advises us to turn outward—to value and heal relationships with our own selves, our colleagues, and our patients. By doing so, we can harness the collective energy of positive relationships to surmount obstacles and thrive.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book addresses aspects of nursing that don't get enough attention. A reader of this book may learn to be a better nurse, but gets there by learning to be a better human being overall. I'm currently a nursing student, and we're taught about treating the whole person, not just their disease. This book applies a holistic approach to the profession of nursing. It's "everything else" that nursing school doesn't teach you, in a format that's easy to read and full of meaningful anecdotes.

Dr. Todaro-Franceschi speaks of dealing with compassion fatigue, burnout, patient suffering, death, and traumatic work environments. She offers ways to make positive changes. She speaks of energy, purpose, healthy work environments, and compassion. She applauds every single nurse (burned out or not), and empowers us all to shape our own lives (and consequently, our patients' lives) through positive and progressive choices. These choices revolve around self-awareness, mutual respect and support of ourselves and others, assertiveness, and self-advocacy. Dr. Todaro-Franceschi explains how "everything is one" and connected. When we treat ourselves and others with respect, everyone wins.

This book is enlightening and empowering; and I feel that health care would progress greatly as a profession if more health care workers implemented the ideals taught in this book. I look forward to re-reading portions of this book with a new perspective as I work as a nurse after graduation.

[Bruce Macvittie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Todaro-Francheschi’s book is a must read not only for nursing professionals and students, but any health care professional interested in improving quality of life for both themselves and their patient/clients. She discusses many issues including professional collaboration, communication, and end of life care always promoting the idea of the individual caregivers strength coming from a patient-centered compassionate, ethical, and spiritual approach. The book is extremely readable, accessible and lays down a simple methodology for avoiding the many pitfalls that lead to burnout in the healthcare setting. It is simply, terrific.

[Laurie Barkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Franceschi-Todaro asks us to imagine the possibilities for nurses and nursing. She imagines a time when compassion will be valued, when it will figure into acuity levels and staffing calculations, and when advanced practice nurses will assert themselves by vetoing a treatment plan with which they disagree. She advises leaders to allow staff time to tell stories of healing moments and to share their feelings in the process. While this is music to my psych nurse/writer’s ears, it may not grab newer nurses who have been force fed evidence-based practice to the exclusion of practice-based knowledge and the clinical intuition that comes from it.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just quit my job because I got burnt out. I new what my stressors were. I picked up this book hoping what I could have done to change the situation. In that sense I was disappointed. The first two chapters are about nursing and care (which I already knew). It did guide me to go over what went wrong. But it was really short on what I could have done. It talks about how the education of nursing should change but that's not going to help me in the now.

[Robert Bogue]

I’m not a nurse, but I’m married to one. My daughter is also a nurse. If nursing could rub off onto someone, I’d be covered in it. That’s one of the reasons why I was so curious about what Compassion Fatigue and Burnout in Nursing had to offer to help me understand.

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