Examining the compassion status of healthcare professionals working in the palliative care units

Abstract

OBJECTIVE This study was conducted to examine the compassion status of healthcare professionals working in the palliative care unit. METHODS Sample of the study consisted of 81 healthcare professionals working in three hospitals in Istanbul. The data were collected with “Sociodemographic Characteristics Form” and “Compassion Scale” in January and February 2019. RESULTS In this study, 65 (80.2%) of the participants were nurses, 12 (14.8%) were physicians and four (4.9%) were health staff members. There was a significant difference between the compassion scores (ZMWU=-2.470; p=0.014) of the healthcare professionals according to their gender. There was a significant difference between the compassion scores (ZMWU=-2.197; p=0.028) of the participants according to their status of having children. There was a significant difference between the compassion scores (t=4.128; p=0.001) of the healthcare professionals according to their perception of interpersonal relations. There was a positively weak correlation between the age averages and total compassion scores (r=0.253; p=0.022) of the participants. CONCLUSION There are many factors that may affect the feelings of compassion of healthcare professionals who work in palliative care, especially with patients in the end-of-life period. It is important for healthcare professionals to know these factors that may affect their own sense of compassion and control their negative features.