Background: Nurses who are also parents may be at risk not only for professional compassion fatigue, but also parental burnout - a reliable and valid predictor of child abuse and neglect. In support, recent research reveals that parents' COVID-19 related stressors predicted elevated potential for child abuse (Katz and Fallon, 2021).
Objective: We explored the harmful effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on nurses' parental burnout, child abuse, and child neglect, as mediated by compassion fatigue (i.e., a combination of job burnout and secondary traumatic stress).
Participants and setting: Participants were 244 nurses (M age = 32.4; 87% female) who were parents of young children (age 12 or under) recruited via chain referral sampling.
Methods: Participants completed an anonymous survey assessing the extent to which they care for COVID-19 patients, are exposed to patients suffering and dying from COVID-19, and have lost family income due to COVID-19. We also measured their compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction, substance abuse, spouse conflict, parental burnout, child abuse, and child neglect.
Results: As hypothesized, direct care of COVID-19 patients, exposure to patient death and suffering due to COVID-19, and family income loss due to COVID-19 predicted greater compassion fatigue, which in turn, predicted greater parental burnout, child abuse, child neglect, spouse conflict, and substance abuse, (IEs ≥ 0.06, all ps < 0.05). Also, as compassion satisfaction increased, parental burnout, child abuse, child neglect, spouse conflict, and substance abuse decreased, rs ≥ -0.203, ps < 0.01.
Conclusions: Theoretical implications and practical implications for medical practice and child abuse prevention are discussed.
Keywords: Burnout; COVID-19; Child abuse; Child neglect; Compassion fatigue; Coronavirus; Nursing; Pandemic; Public health crisis; Spouse conflict; Substance abuse.
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