Maintain Empathy and Preventing Compassion Fatigue

How to maintain empathy and still deliver your best care possible when you are teetering on compassion fatigue and burnout. Our patients expect a lot from us. Honesty is the most important thing to them. They deserve to receive compassionate care and empathy. There can be a tendency to create a wall between us and our patients so that we can avoid the risk of experiencing compassion fatigue or, worse, burnout.

What you will learn from this module:

1. How to provide good medical care your patient needs by delivering patient centered care without feeling you are risking developing compassion fatigue or burnout.
2. A primary reason why medical professionals caring for patients with advanced cancer don’t want to get too personal is their fear of exposing their vulnerable side. Showing emotion should not be viewed as a bad thing but instead as a natural part of being a caring person.
3. Learn the benefits of no longer telling a patient you “are sorry” and instead by knowing the patient well, you can more effectively prepare them for end of life.
4. Understand the importance getting to know your patient has on your patient’s respect for you, confidence in your expertise, and ability to cope with what lies ahead.
5. Remind yourself that the goal of treatment was never to cure the patient of their disease.
6. How to separate your work time from your family time and personal time.
7. Treatment for treatment’s sake is bad care.