| Summary: | 碩士 === 朝陽科技大學 === 社會工作系碩士班 === 102 === The reminiscences of a professor in the classroom sent the author on a journey to look for answers to several issues. In Taiwan, issues on emotional reactions among professional helpers in the course of rendering assistance to others mainly cover counter-transference, burnout, and vicarious traumatization, but researchers rarely study compassion fatigue. However, this issue is often seen in professional international journals. Moreover, a report from 2007 in NASW NEWS of the United States highlights information on compassion fatigue in hope that the report could raise the understanding and awareness of compassion fatigue among practitioners and then reduce its impact. Therefore, based on revelations in the classroom acquired by the researcher and dialogues with research literature, this research aims to understand the progression and impact of compassion fatigue among social workers at the Centers for the Prevention of Domestic Violence in Taiwan.
This research adopts a qualitative research approach and interviews fourteen senior social workers and social workers at Centers for the Prevention of Domestic Violence with in-depth interview and participation observation. The researcher conducted observations for half a year at the same research location to understand the condition under which compassion fatigue takes shape among social workers in the public sector and responses from those social workers. Based on these interviews, the major findings of this study are as follows:
1. Compassion is a “double edged sword” in the professional progression of rendering aid to others: the input of compassion is both a fundamental medium in sustaining the work of rendering aid to others and a powerful catalyst in triggering the outburst of professional fatigue.
2. A fragile structural environment makes the work of domestic violence prevention a job with high trauma, high pressure, and high work load. These three factors are the main reasons why compassion fatigue occurs.
3. The overt exhibition of compassion fatigue among domestic violence prevention social workers shows symptoms of physical and mental exhaustion, anxiety, anger, and powerlessness. These symptoms affect these individuals and make them exhibit behavior traits such as “impersonal behavior, emotional exhaustion, and lack of personal achievement” in the workplace. If such work performance under compassion fatigue is left untreated, social workers of domestic violence prevention will be trapped in the quagmire of the spectrum that is the exhaustion of professionalism with no way out.
4. Among the strategies to cope with compassion fatigue, internal searching and external support are the two main approaches. However, the external support environment is not functioning well. As a result, social workers for the prevention of domestic violence have to adjust their mindset by themselves.
Finally, based on the result of aforementioned research, this research offers suggestions on the three major dimensions: at the organizational level, for the social workers of domestic violence prevention, and on the education of social work.
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