Disasters such as Hurricane Katrina confer trauma and post-traumatic stress on all
the victims including those who care for or support the care of the overt “victims.”
National attention has been paid intermittently to uprooted residents, assistance
failures (especially from governmental agencies), and remarkably creative humane acts
by local and nonlocal people. Highest priority should be paid to patients and victims,
but serious consideration in disaster planning and response is also needed in caring
for caregivers. These include nurses, physicians, trainees, staffs of health facilities,
and administrators who manage the infrastructure that facilitates caregiving. Health
professionals are often neglected since their culture promotes reticence to ask for
support and assistance. In turn, their support staff, especially legally responsible
administrators, are perhaps more invisible. They too live in the community and are
torn between their work, facilitating their roles, and their own devastation. Compassion
fatigue, a form of post-traumatic stress disorder, is a natural by-product of assisting
traumatized and seriously distressed victims. If those healers are lost, either physically
from relocating or emotionally because of secondary stress disorders, the ripple effect
is enormous for the community.
KEY INDEXING TERMS
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References
- Figley C. Compassion fatigue: coping with secondary traumatic stress disorder in those who treat the traumatized. Brunner-Mazel, New York1995
- Burnout: Effectively managing a grief syndrome [Special issue]. 4. Bulletin of the Society for Professional Well-Being, Being Well2002: 18
- Preventing compassion fatigue: A team treatment model.in: Figley C. Compassion fatigue: coping with secondary traumatic stress disorder in those who treat the traumatized. Brunner-Mazel, New York1995: 209-231
Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
May 21,
2008
Received:
May 19,
2008
Identification
Copyright
© 2008 Southern Society for Clinical Investigation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
