Spiritual Health, Nursing Stress, Compassion Fatigue, and COVID-19: A Descriptive Correlational Study

Stress is inevitable in nurses caring for patients with COVID-19 and may cause compassion fatigue. Spiritual health seems to play a crucial role in coping with stress. Therefore, this study aims to determine the relationship between spiritual health, nursing stress caused by COVID-19, and compassion fatigue in nurses caring for COVID-19 patients.

In this cross-sectional study, 216 nurses caring for patients with COVID-19 participated from Bohlool Hospital (31), Nohomeh Day Hospital (100), and Razi Hospital (n=85), Khorasan Razavi Province, Iran, in 2021. The nurses of the COVID departments were selected by a simple random sampling method. Data were collected using a demographic questionnaire, spiritual health questionnaire, Figley professional quality of life questionnaire, and nursing stress questionnaire. Due to the non-normal distribution of the data, the Spearman correlation coefficient was used to examine the relationship between spiritual health, nursing stress, and compassion fatigue at a significance level of 5%. 

A significant direct relationship was observed between spiritual health and compassion fatigue (P<0.001, r=0.35). Thus, compassion fatigue increases with higher spiritual health. Also, a significant and direct relationship was observed between nursing stress and compassion fatigue (P<0.001, r=0.27), whereby compassion fatigue increased with increasing nursing stress.

According to the study results, higher spiritual health and higher nursing stress are associated with higher compassion fatigue. Thus, it is suggested that nurses be trained in nursing stress management techniques that can reduce compassion fatigue.