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REVIEW article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 |
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1500305
Understanding Compassion Fatigue among Social workers: A scoping review
Provisionally accepted- 1 Nanjing Normal University of Special Education, Nanjing, China
- 2 Tunghai University, Taichung, Taiwan
Exposure to significant sources of trauma and stress among social workers is increasingly identified as an important issue that can impact the quality of professional services, and the social worker's well-being. There is more and more literature focusing on this phenomenon and related concepts. However, to our knowledge, there has been no published systematic review of the literature on compassion fatigue (CF) among social workers. Therefore, we performed a systematic scoping review by searching five electronic databases for studies published from 2001 to 2021, with the aim of identifying relevant literature. A total of twenty-nine studies were selected in the review following the systematic search strategy. Five themes were identified through the use of a narrative approach to synthesizing the literature by a Five-step framework of scoping review, including the prevalence, factors related, attributes and characteristics, consequences and strategies or interventions to reduce compassion fatigue among social workers. Findings revealed that few studies had examined the consequences and tested the effectiveness of specific interventions. Furthermore, future research involving concept analysis and related theoretical model was required in the field of social work. Implications: Better understanding of social workers' experiences of compassion fatigue can improve their wellbeing and service delivery. Further research is required to fully understand the consequences and interventions on the quality of services provided. Future research exploring compassion fatigue across organisational settings, and identifying strategies to mitigate compassion fatigue among social workers would enhance the current knowledge and related theoretical models.
Keywords: compassion fatigue, Trauma, Scoping review, social worker, themes analysis
Received: 23 Sep 2024; Accepted: 09 Jan 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wu and Lu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Tian Wu, Nanjing Normal University of Special Education, Nanjing, China
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