As part of the interprofessional team of hospice caregivers, social workers are exposed to multiple stressors, both in their work with dying patients and their families and in their functioning within rapidly changing health care organizations. Ongoing exposure to these professional stressors prompts consideration of the emotional and psychological impact hospice social work may have on those who do it, how hospice social workers evaluate and interpret the costs and benefits of their work, how they process and cope with the consistent themes of dying, death, loss, and grief that pervade their everyday lives, and what interventions may assist in mitigating their stressors. This descriptive, cross-sectional research study explored the prevalence of compassion fatigue within the context of hospice social work and provided information regarding the nature of professional stress experienced by social workers in end-of-life care settings. Professional stress factors and worker-related factors were considered. Fifty-five hospice social workers from 35 Hospice organizations in Michigan completed an online survey for this study. Results suggested that compassion fatigue is a genuine concern among hospice social workers and that compassion fatigue is correlated with wok overload and a depression diagnosis within the past 12 months. In addition, compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction were found to be negatively correlated, suggesting that as compassion fatigue increases, compassion satisfaction decreases.
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