Interprofessional Group Intervention to Enhance Compassion Satisfaction and Resilience (CSRS)

The purpose of this study is to evaluate an educational professional development program designed to assist health care professionals in developing self-awareness and self-care choices as a means to avoid compassion fatigue and improve resilience.

Professional caregivers are at risk of compassion fatigue due to the nature of their work and repeated exposure over time to work-related stressors. Symptoms of compassion fatigue may include decreased concentration/productivity, increased sick days, and high turnover rates which directly effect patient satisfaction and safety. Lack of data that supports this use of program, though anecdotally, it has been endorsed and benefits from its use are described. Quality of patient care, workforce engagement, and financial effects from turnover of staff are viewed as negative impacts from compassion fatigue. Our study seeks to extend the body of knowledge with regard to use of a particular resilience program that has shown some promise in a small pilot study.

Professional development program provided to small groups of health care professionals in three different sessions over a period of one month with additional independent individual work to be completed between sessions.

Change from baseline compassion fatigue subscale measure at 1 and 6 months assessed by compassion fatigue subscale of ProQOL 5 [ Time Frame: Data collected before the program starts and one month after the end of the program and six months

Change from baseline burnout subscale measure at 1 and 6 months assessed by burnout subscale of ProQOL 5 [ Time Frame: Data collected before the program starts and one month after the end of the program and six months

Change from baseline compassion satisfaction subscale measure at 1 and 6 months assessed by compassion satisfaction subscale of ProQOL 5 [ Time Frame: Data collected before the program starts and one month after the end of the program and six months

Resilience will be measured using the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) a 6-item scale developed by Smith et al.(2008).

Change from baseline in resilience measure at 1 month and 6 months assessed by BRS scale [ Time Frame: Data collected before the program starts and one month after the end of the program and six months

Inclusion Criteria: employment within inpatient or outpatient setting in non-profit healthcare system as a healthcare professional Professional direct caregivers (nurses, physicians, advanced practice providers, social workers, counselors, chaplains, respiratory therapists, pharmacists Exclusion Criteria: actively participating in or plans to participate in any other formalized mindfulness-based stress reduction program during the time period of the study

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