Enhancing compassion satisfaction among Reproductive Medicine Healthcare Practitioners in Hong Kong

Abstract

Professional quality of life denotes the concept of compassion satisfaction (CS) and compassion fatigue (CF). There are abundant studies on CF, which can be expressed in terms of Secondary Trauma and Burnout. However, less attention has be placed on CS, which refers to the job satisfaction derived from doing helping work effectively. Since people with higher CS enjoy the work they do, experience positive thoughts and feel contentment, it is crucial especially for the healthcare practitioners who work in the stressful setting of reproductive medicine where patients face a lot of uncertainty and uncontrollability. In view of this, a quasi-experimental study was done in which 25 healthcare practitioners from 11 licensed assisted reproduction clinics including nurses, doctors and embryologists joined a professional training course on infertility counseling. It is comprised of nine 3-hour weekly sessions with self-reflective activities including mindfulness, compassionated meditation and reflections on meaning of life. Participants were invited to complete self-administered questionnaires before and after the course, which consisted Professional Quality of Life measuring both CS and CF, and scales measuring psychological wellbeing. It was found that participants showed significant increase in CS (Pre-course: 33.94 ± 4.4; Post-course: 36.35 ± 3.82, t=-3.29, p < 0.001) after joining the course, but no significant changes in CF. Besides, those who were with religious beliefs and lower educational level, younger in age, worked longer in general medical setting but shorter in ART field showed greater improvement in CS (p<0.05) after joining the course. To conclude, the training course was proven effective in enhancing the professional quality of life among healthcare practitioners in terms of CS, regardless of no improvement in CF. Thus, in future launching of training course on infertility counseling, CS should be taken into account for consideration.