Compassion fatigue and staff well-being in a secure psychiatric setting: causes and effects of this relationship

This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Forensic Clinical Psychology at the University of Birmingham. This volume of the thesis contains the research component and is presented in the form of three papers related to compassion fatigue and staff well-being in a medium secure psychiatric setting. The first paper is a systematic review of the literature in which the existing evidence has been critically examined to determine what is known about the relationship between compassion fatigues, burnout and compassion satisfaction in mental health professionals and assess a range of factors influencing the development of compassion fatigue in the workplace. The second paper is an empirical research paper which utilises a quantitative cross-sectional survey design to explore individual and environmental factors influencing the development of compassion fatigue among staff in a medium secure psychiatric setting. The third paper is a public domain briefing paper which summarises the main findings of the systematic review and the empirical paper, for distribution to wider audiences