After our conversation last week, I wanted to provide you with a couple additional
resources extenuating the validity of our proposed study into specific
interventions resulting in the most efficacious reduction of secondary traumatic
stress in nurses. You will find that the most common key terms in these articles
as they relate to our research as follows: Secondary-traumatic stress, ProQOL
(measuring STS, compassion fatigue, guilt), and empathy. While both explore STS
via the ProQOL, they provide potential substantial evidence for us if we choose as
we move forward.
First, Cain and Gautreaux (2022) utilized a direct approach to symptom reduction
of STS, burnout, and compassion fatigue by evaluating the pre and post scores of
nurses ProQOL (N=113 nurses out of 164 providers). Specifically, they evaluated
how a 9-hour educational seminar relating to child maltreatment would impact
individual scores of compassion satisfaction, burnout, and STS, along with
recognition of child maltreatment. Most significantly, it was found that the
educational intervention did result in reduction in STS (P=.035) as quantified by
Wilcoxon’s signed-rank test with p < .05 being significant. Unfortunately, they only
obtained a 51.2% response rate for the posttest without specifically identifying
the number of nurses that did supply posttest data. That being said, I believe this
study provides a basis to further hone our study by implementing CE-CERT
interventions to our experimental group and the standard CBT techniques most
commonly used. Again, the most advantageous feature of this article is the
presence of a specific intervention leading to reduction of STS in nurses, thus
providing us with additional supporting evidence and direction to explore our
research question.
Separately, I also found this article that I believe increases the validity of our
projected research design. In their research, Mottahi, Poursheikhali, and Shameli
(2020) explored the role a nurse’s level of empathy has on contributing to levels
of secondary traumatic stress. Out of the 300 nurses accepted into the study,
level of empathy explains 77% of the compassion fatigue variance in survivorship
guilt associated with STS. Furthermore, the results of the Sobel test equated to
zero with significance of p = .0002 for secondary traumatic stress. Additionally,
the identification of empathy having a significant role in levels of STS experienced
by nurses lends itself to support the need for direct intervention aimed at
empathy, which CE-CERT does. While this article does highlight a key factor of
our proposed research, the results were gathered via self-report survey. While this
does not refute the body of research gathered, perhaps we should follow through
with collecting our data in additional ways to those of self-report surveys. d
Conjunctively, three key points we can move forward with and analyze from these
articles is 1) direct intervention can lead to reduction of STS symptoms (Cain &
Gautreaux, 2022), 2) nurse level of empathy is significantly associated with levels
of STS and 3) alternative forms of data collection may supply supplemental and
additional perspective into a nurse’s level of STS described by the ProQOL.
Personally, I believe we should still utilize the ProQOL as a baseline and nurse
perceived change in STS, while also conducting brief Likert scale questions on
several of each nurse’s patients over the course of the intervention. We
undoubtedly must look at cost, time, and practicality of this method, but I do
believe it would provide data that can further our research as well as research to
follow. Read over these articles for yourself and we will discuss them further in
our next meeting.
Cain, C. M., & Gautreaux, K. (2022). Reducing secondary traumatic stress and
fueling knowledge of child maltreatment d among health care providers. Journal of
Trauma Nursing, 29(1), 41–46. https://doi-
org.acu.idm.oclc.org/10.1097/jtn.0000000000000630 (Links to an external site.)
Mottaghi, S., Poursheikhali, H., & Shameli, L. (2020). Empathy, compassion fatigue,
guilt and secondary traumatic stress in nurses. Nursing Ethics, 27(2), 494–504.
https://doi-org.acu.idm.oclc.org/10.1177/0969733019851548
