Compassion fatigue and secondary traumatic stress in social workers examination of levels

Social service; that touch many points of society, are marginalized, It is a discipline that works with injured and disadvantaged individuals. Social service While performing their duties, experts are affected by the client groups they serve and It faces some problems. Some of these problems; burnout, increased stress, It includes negativities such as compassion fatigue and trauma. When the literature is examined Although various studies have been conducted on compassion fatigue and secondary traumatic stress, social examining compassion fatigue and secondary traumatic stress levels of service professionals. No study could be found. Researching these concepts and providing service how the concepts are used in the literature in order to identify the problems experienced by the employees. It is necessary to examine its definition. Urnek (2021) defines compassion as an individual's ability to help others. He defines it as the sum of the feelings and impulses that direct him to act. These impulses and feelings It reveals compassion fatigue by creating a negative force in parallel with the service provided over time. It removes. The concept of compassion fatigue was introduced by Kelly et al. (2015) exposure to, being affected by, and the stress resulting from that exposure to an individual who has been It is explained as. Compassion fatigue is the burnout and secondary traumatic experience experienced by the individual. It is also defined as the sum of stress. The groups social workers serve and It may be directly exposed to some risks and negativities due to the mass of people it addresses. is alive. The social work profession's support for the most vulnerable and marginalized segments of society After a while, the embrace of experts in this field wears out and individual causes problems. The most important of these problems are the increase in the stress level of the specialist and experiencing trauma is coming. In his study, Aca (2021) examined social workers' emotional The reason why they experience numbness, stress and emotional depersonalization is due to the increase in case load, daily They attributed this to the problems they encounter in their work routines and that the cases they encounter are affects their lives and social workers experience depersonalization, stress and emotional numbness. He stated that he could not receive professional support to protect himself from similar negative situations. Ozturk and Uluşahin (2008) state that stress affects an individual's entire life and, in some cases, disrupts their balance. He stated that he broke it. Individuals living with stress have varying and different reactions to stress. He claimed that it was. Kahil and Palabıyıkoğlu (2018) provide services to individuals with a traumatic past. Although the people presenting the disease experience secondary exposure to stress, they are affected by this traumatism and He claimed that he was experiencing negativity. Due to the cases social workers encounter are at risk of experiencing traumatic stress. According to Çetinkaya Büyükbodur (2018), social work There are various reasons why a professional may experience secondary traumatic stress. These; expert's work duration, cases seen, age, gender, previous traumas and supervision is due to its deficiency. When the literature is examined, compassion in the field of social work No study explaining fatigue and secondary traumatic stress level could be found. In this sense, the study to be carried out will examine the compassion fatigue experienced by social workers. It will make a significant contribution to the literature in explaining the level of secondary traumatic stress.