Compassion fatigue: A meta-narrative review of the healthcare literature
Sinclair and colleagues report a meta-narrative review of 90 studies from the nursing and wider healthcare literature on compassion fatigue. The review examines whether the construct describes the work-related stress of healthcare providers accurately and whether it is a valid target for intervention. It reports that the term was adapted from crisis counselling and psychotherapy and that most studies measure it with a scale that does not assess compassion. The authors conclude that the concept should be critically re-examined in favour of a new discourse on healthcare provider work-related stress.
Sinclair and colleagues report a meta-narrative review of 90 studies from the nursing and wider healthcare literature on compassion fatigue. The review examines whether the construct describes the work-related stress of healthcare providers accurately and whether it is a valid target for intervention. It reports that the term was adapted from crisis counselling and psychotherapy and that most studies measure it with a scale that does not assess compassion. The authors conclude that the concept should be critically re-examined in favour of a new discourse on healthcare provider work-related stress.
Written from the abstract, Europe PMC record, 2026-11-03.
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Sinclair, S., Raffin-Bouchal, S., Venturato, L., Mijovic-Kondejewski, J., & Smith-MacDonald, L. (2017). Compassion fatigue: A meta-narrative review of the healthcare literature. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 69, 9-24. doi:10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2017.01.003 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2017.01.003