WHEN THE CARING GETS TOUGH Compassion Fatigue and Veterinary Care

“One of the biggest favours any veterinarian can do for his or her patients, colleagues, and family, is to take self-care and stress control seriously”. Dr Lisa Miller (JAVMA News, 2004) Veterinarians and veterinary nurses, along with other health care professionals, may experience compassion fatigue as a result of continued exposure to the traumatic events their patients and families experience. Also called secondary traumatic stress (STS) or vicarious traumatisation, the result can be a falling off in professional capabilities, emotional exhaustion, distress and burnout. This phenomenon is not only experienced by professional “helpers and carers”, but also by non-professional care-givers and volunteers. Compassion fatigue has been defined as “the emotional burden that health care providers may experience as a result of overexposure to traumatic events that patients are experiencing ” (Schwam, 1998). An earlier term used to describe this phenomenon was secondary victimisation (Figley, 1982). Carla Joinson is generally credited with introducing the term “compassion fatigue” into the literature (Joinson, 1992) in an article about a special type of burnout being experienced by nurses in an emergency department. However, this term appeare