Relationship between moral distress, compassion fatigue, and burnout levels of psychiatric nurses

INTRODUCTION: This was a descriptive and correlational study conducted to determine the moral distress, compassion fatigue, and burnout levels of psychiatric nurses.
METHODS: The study sample consisted of 107 nurses in psychiatric clinics of hospitals in Konya province. Data were collected using the personal information form, Moral Distress Scale for Psychiatric Nurses (MDSP), Compassion Fatigue Subscale of the Quality-of-Life Scale for Employees (CFS), and Burnout Measure (BM). The data were evaluated using t-test, Mann–Whitney U test, Kruskal–Wallis test, and Pearson’s correlation and multiple regression analyses.
RESULTS: The nurses’ mean MDSP score was 1.65±1.23; mean CFS score, 1.0±0.75; and mean BM score, 3.01±1.08. A significant positive relationship was observed between the nurses’ MDSP, CFS, and BM scores. Furthermore, there was a statistically significant difference between their demographic characteristics, such as age, gender, marital status, educational level, and mean MDSP, CFS, and BM scores (p<0.05). A statistically significant difference was observed between vocational characteristics such as work position, shifts, job satisfaction, satisfaction with psychiatry, ethics education, frequency of ethical situations, ethical problems with the team, ethical issues related to patients and relatives, and mean MDSP, CFS, and BM scores (p<0.05).
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: A positive relationship between the psychiatric nurses’ mean MDSP, CFS, and BM scores were observed. In addition, compassion fatigue and burnout levels were found to increase as the moral distress level of the nurses increased.