Imagine: compassion fatigue training for nurses.

The residency program for oncology nurses at University of North Carolina Healthcare is comprehensive. New graduate nurses in the inpatient setting undergo 13 weeks of orientation with two primary preceptors on the unit and then meet monthly for four hours of didactic learning and support for the first 12 months. The nurse educators who planned this residency wanted to create a celebration that would encourage reflection on the past year and teach self-care strategies as well. Mimi Alvarez, RN, MSN, PMHCNS-BC, a psychiatric clinical nurse specialist with the Comprehensive Cancer Support Program, has developed a presentation for the nurses on compassion fatigue. Alvarez’s presentation addresses the risks of passionately caring for patients. Alvarez knows that nurses have to be acutely aware of where their “gas tank” of emotional energy hovers and have a conscious awareness of the dynamics of caring. Mimi’s desire to teach this class comes from her own experience. “When I was a baby nurse in oncology, no one told me that I would be coming home and be having dreams about my patients; that something would remind me of my patient. No one told me any of this would happen. I thought I was losing my mind, that something was wrong with me. I was being human. “To understand (the patient’s) humanity I have to go inside of myself and understand my own humanity. There is no way I can be in a relationship with (the patient) and not be touched. There is no way I can care for another and not be changed. That component of self reflection is what is missing in the training of nurses. We teach nurses to reflect clinically, not psychologically.” Ann Marie Lee Walton, RN, MPH, OCN®, CHES, is a clinical nurse IV for inpatient hematology/ oncology and Mimi Alvarez, RN, MSN, PMHCNS-BC, is a psychiatric clinical nurse specialist in the Comprehensive Cancer Support Program, both at the North Carolina Cancer Hospital in Chapel Hill.