Multiple terrorist attacks: Compassion fatigue in Israeli social workers.

Abstract

With each recurrent terror attack in Israel, hospital social workers attend family members of the injured and the dead from the very first hours after the incident, giving them psychological first aid and information. The aims of the study were to assess the occurrence and levels of compassion fatigue and its correlates among hospital social workers. Fifty-three social workers from two major hospitals in Israel filled out the Secondary Traumatization and Burnout subscales of the Compassion Fatigue Questionnaire, in addition to demographic details, professional experience, and participation in supervision or debriefing sessions. The results show that social workers had participated on average in 4.4 (SD 2.6) terror attacks. Of the social workers, 75.5% had participated in debriefing sessions soon after the terror incident, and most had participated in individual or group supervision. They reported moderate levels of secondary traumatization and low levels of burnout. The latter outcome was related to parti...