Episode 93: Compassion Fatigue in Educators with Dr Chiara Horlin

Introduction to Podcast

0:00Welcome to the Learning Scientist podcast, a podcast for teachers, students, and parents about evidence-based practice and learning. Hello and welcome to the Learning Scientist podcast. My name is Karolina Kupatetze and I'm a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Glasgow. In today's podcast episode, we are going to discuss and focus on teachers' well-being. We just started the new academic year over here, so we are busy making sure that everything

0:33is ready and signposted for the students, and we are gearing up to deliver our teaching. So as educators, we care about our students and the student experience. However, our own well-being can be affected over time and may take a hit.

Compassion Fatigue

0:48So one phenomenon that you may have experienced yourself before is compassion fatigue. And today, I have invited my colleague, Dr. Kiara Horland, to chat about this phenomenon in educators and to share her insights. So welcome, Kiara. I'm delighted that you have joined me today to tell us a bit more about your projects on compassion fatigue. Can you maybe introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background and, most importantly, your motivation for this topic?

1:20Of course, thank you so much for having me. As there's some background about me, I am a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Glasgow. I have quite a mixed bag of research interests, quite a few of which have really evolved from personal experiences or discussions with colleagues, particularly those that are related to the learning experience, but a lot of this is focused on well-being, inclusive practices, and how to really make the

1:51learning experience better for everybody, students and educators as well.

Personal Experience with Compassion Fatigue

1:55On a technical level, at the University of Glasgow, I am a Senior Honours Program Lead for our Undergraduate Psychology Program. And previously, I was the Program Lead for a Distance Learning MSc that we ran in the school as well. I'm thought that these roles are very student-facing. They involve having a lot of oversight and having quite a deep connection with large cohorts of students who all have very individual and sometimes complex needs.

2:25So there are a lot of often sensitive discussions happening all the time in either of those roles. So my first leadership role with that Lancers Program, I actually took, I think it was about three or four weeks before the pandemic, which is terrible timing. And so I was managing this role and integrating into this role at a time when essentially all of our lives were on fire. And after some time had passed, I noticed above and beyond what we were all dealing with during

2:59that time, a hugely negative impact on my own well-being. And through a process of reflection and kind of understanding what was going on, I noticed that a lot of the time I was, because of the nature of my role and being very focused on student support, I was really prioritizing student well-being and in this case, student distress and processing that and supporting that ahead of my own. So this manifested in quite a few different roles because I was still completing my role

3:32to a high degree of competence and it manifested in things like compassion fatigue and it had a very real impact on my own mental and physical health. So it really came from a very personal place to understand, you know, what this phenomenon was and why we were experiencing as educators because I think even though that we are, you know, the two of us are educators in psychology, this wasn't our intent in becoming academic and there's very limited research outside of a healthcare context or a social work context or the kind of context that you would

4:07expect people to experience this. There's very little on educators when I first started looking into this. I think it's only going to become increasingly relevant to the changing landscape of every education sector and the kind of roles that educators play, whether it's primary education, secondary, higher education. I think it's just a phenomenon that is increasing, that our roles are becoming increasingly blurred

4:37and what kind of support we're getting. So that was my personal motivation, which led to academic motivation. And that's interesting. So it came really out of a lived experience and maybe then reflecting on is it, is it me or is it something, is it a thing? Is what I'm experiencing something that others are experiencing as a first step and then as an additional step is their research to back this up as well. So it's kind of that, that kind of, you know, escalating interest in a topic.

5:08So quite interesting.

Defining Compassion Fatigue

5:09So we have been talking about compassion fatigue and we have been, you have mentioned it and so on and, but what is it? What is compassion fatigue? It's sometimes used interchangeably with this idea of secondary traumatic stress and they're very, very inherently late. But I kind of like to think of secondary traumatic stress being slightly above compassion fatigue and compassion fatigue being a significant component of it. But essentially they're both referring to a kind of physical, emotional and psychological

5:40strain that comes from consistently empathising with people and supporting people who are in distress or trauma. So you're not directly experiencing the distress or trauma, but you are absorbing it, maybe observing it or hearing about it and facilitating how other people are processing it. So you can see how it's very applicable to lots of different kinds of contexts where you are supporting

6:11human beings, no matter the role. how it can kind of manifest is it looks a lot like post-traumatic stress disorder. So we're looking at hyper arousal. So they have quite physical symptoms. Sometimes it may be manifesting as avoidance, intrusive thought, certainly burnout, whether that is physical, emotional, cognitive burnout. But it's specifically tied to this process of empathic engagement and being exposed to or

6:46secondarily experiencing other people's trauma. So it's having lots of these kinds of incidences over time and you get this cumulative effect. More tangibly, I feel familiar to some people, emotional exhaustion, issues with sleep, emotional detachment sometimes, reduced empathy, cognitive difficulties, you know, the classic kind of issues of concentration, memory. And you can see how these impacts, not just your work life, but they certainly kind of bleed into personal

7:23lives outside of the work context because you can't switch these, you know. Yeah. So you take them with you home and kind of you are preoccupied about them. And it basically can color everything else that you do in your life as well. Yeah, you're disrupting a lot of your biological systems if you want to get down to it on that level. It's affecting you on a physiological level and your regulation, how your brain is working and how you respond to any kind of situation.

7:54You can't differentiate between the work and the person. Just to really differentiate maybe between burnout and compassion fatigue or maybe how it really relates to each other. Because probably many of our listeners know about burnout. You hear more about, you know, burnout in education, in teachers, in carers and so on. So with compassion fatigue specifically, how does it relate to burnout then? Well, I like to think of burnout as a kind of a general term that we can arrive at a point of burnout

8:28on multiple different avenues for different reasons and from different directions. So you could have burnout in the workplace just by being overworked. You could have burnout that eventuates from both kind of work and social scenarios at work and having maybe tension in your workplace. But compassion fatigue is specifically associated with an imperfect demand. So burnout is really a component or a feature of compassion fatigue explicitly related to supporting people

9:04and having to really flex that empathy muscle far too often. When we look at different educational sectors then, how does it present and manifest in educators, let's say, in the primary sector or maybe later in higher education and so on? Yeah, we know quite a bit of how it manifests in healthcare settings. And that was very informative and very interesting when I was starting to look into this. And then the initial kind of things that we've done with some student projects, have looked at it within a primary setting and a higher education setting.

9:37So within the primary school setting, we've had staff reporting feeling drained because they are explicitly supporting children who are experiencing trauma outside of the educational environment. Maybe their family context or the kind of the socio-political context that they were in prior to whatever context they're in now. If they have additional support needs and aren't receiving the adequate kind of support. Or if these educators are in classes with lots of challenging behaviour.

10:11What this is kind of presented at or how they've experienced this is in some cases for unsafe classroom situations, physical injury, impact to their mental health and being unable to switch off after work. Higher education staff are slightly different in some capacity, mainly because the context in which they're interacting with students is quite different. But within a higher education context, staff are experiencing compassion fatigue through pastoral care responsibilities.

10:43So supporting students in crisis, whether that is a life crisis, a transitional crisis, a mental crisis. And that has led to people saying they're really worried about students outside of their work hours. They're concerned with the lack of support that they can offer. You know, they feel like their friends are tired. They're struggling with having these blurred boundaries between the pandemic, mental health and wellbeing. And really quite ingrained dissatisfaction with institutional support,

11:16with the kind of structural support that they can refer students to. But regardless of whether we're talking about primary or higher education, across both groups, educators have described feeling a lot of emotional numbing, but also irritability. A lot of cases of reduced job satisfaction. And really, unfortunately, questioning their own professional competence. You will see big hits to self-confidence and self-efficacy in their professional tasks.

11:47So quite a strong impact you can imagine then that comes with compassion fatigue and obviously managing the symptoms. But the impact can probably be more like wider reaching in some in some cases. So what is the impact of compassion fatigue? Yeah, well, we have some very kind of localized impact to the individual, but then kind of wider circles of impact within their professional context.

12:18And then, of course, within their home and personal life as well. So on staff as individual, we have had reports of kind of increased anxiety, low mood, sadness, irritability, exacerbated health complaints, and obviously a risk of kind of professional burnout. And this really is manifesting on a physical level, not just on a mental health or a cognitive level. So physical exhaustion, stress, sleep, and all those kinds of very concrete manifestations of poor mental health.

12:54It is also impacting professional practice or how people are operating within their work context. And it's very understandable if you have reduced concentration and impact to your cognitive capacity. So there's mistakes in the workplace, maybe reduced job performance, obviously a difficulty sustaining empathy. If that if that well is dry, you can't pulling from it. And that can then impact, of course, the level of effective support you give to people and students.

13:28So even though, you know, it's the consequences to the students that you might encounter in the future who may be bearing some of the consequences of staff being involved. Is it the kind of vicious cycle that could happen, you know? Yeah, so you're already kind of very much drained, then can obviously not perform to the level that you maybe have expectations to yourself

13:58and how you should be performing or supporting and so on. That feeds back to, you know, more drain and feeling more fatigued. And obviously you are caught in that cycle that's really difficult probably to break. Yeah, I definitely think even if, particularly if you have some level of insight into like, you know that you're experiencing this, that it's impacting your care for students, that's just going to keep feeding itself, knowing that you're not doing what you wish you could or you wish you should be able to do.

14:31And that will just kind of keep spiraling downwards in terms of your ability to support people and your self-efficacy and your self-confidence and professional competence. So yeah, very much a vicious cycle or a downward spiral. Not weatherism in particular. No. Oh. And ultimately this does impact retention. Yeah. You know, we have a lot of educators leaving the profession early because of compassion fatigue, because of secondary trauma stress.

15:02And not only do we have people leaving the sector, but, you know, we have this fight turnover in schools that are already understaffed and disengagement in universities with staff that are probably already overburdened. So it creates or contributes to a level of instability that again, the vicious cycle, a downward spiral, these are all kind of risk factors that we're just exacerbating on top of each other. And then at an institutional level, obviously, this strains resources.

15:36It impacts the quality of the pastoral support the whole system can provide. And it's definitely an impact in terms of workplace morale as well.

Impact of Compassion Fatigue

15:46I think you conducted two studies looking specifically at maybe risk factors to compassion fatigue and secondary traumatic stress in educators. Can you tell us a little bit more about your studies, how you conducted them and what you found? Both of these studies were conducted with some wonderful student researchers. And so these are quite small scale studies, but we had some really powerful numbers for both.

16:20And the output is still quite impressive and quite impactful. And it's very consistent with what we see in the limited research that already said. And it's very consistent with kind of what we would see in the healthcare setting as well. They're all very informative of each other. The first one that we did with higher education was a mixed methods project. One of the limitations we had with that, though, is that the quantitative measures,

16:52the psychometric measures were not super tailored to this kind of context. They're a little bit generic. Just one thing just for our listeners. So what do you mean by mixed methods exactly? So what do you mean by quantitative compared to qualitative? Just to give a bit more of context there. Absolutely. I'm slipping into my... So a mixed method study is basically where we're using different ways of gathering information from people

17:22to hopefully triangulate them in a way that they reinforce each other. So we're mixing a qualitative method, which is directly hearing people's voices, which in this context, we had open response text boxes. It can be quite a difficult, challenging topic, or people might be concerned about the impact of their career. So we made it completely anonymous and they could say in their own words what their experience was.

17:52And then the quantitative side, the questionnaire side was trying to find measurement tools that could capture the dimensions so that we could look at them from a statistical perspective. But a lot of these questionnaires out there were looking at these things from a very broad perspective. So it could be applicable to a nurse, a social worker, or an educator. So they weren't quite the right fit. But the qualitative data, so the active voices that we had from educators within the study, were very, very powerful.

18:28So within this higher education context, we had just under 100 people. And it identified a lot of the risk factors and consequences of having a very supportive role, student-facing role, and the demands it placed on people. So there was a lot of institutional dissatisfaction. There were people actively citing professional burnout, having these issues of blurred boundaries, and that tension of, am I too accessible?

18:58How do I protect myself? But wanting to be accessible because otherwise the student had no other source of support. But then the emotional toll that that took. Because, you know, I'm sure you share an experience with me, Carolina, is that sometimes you feel you wish you could do more, but you have no idea what you could do. And there are people whose profession it is to provide that support.

19:28But you're the person that is in front of the student at the time. So there's a lot of helplessness and uncertainty or lack of confidence. But also then hearing people's experiences. You absorb that if you're, you know, not a psychopath. You do. I don't know what to help, but take that kind of empathic sponge. But what we heard from people is that it really highlighted the need for the university to formally acknowledge that this problem exists.

20:01Pastoral care is emotional labour. And there needs to be at an institutional level better infrastructure to support students. And staff wellbeing supporting students. Yeah. I think last year you organised the first aid in mental health training for a couple of us. that was very much needed. So it was super helpful to understand not only how you can support, but also where the boundaries

20:34are and what to do when you, you know, you hit those boundaries and you, you hit the limits that you are also a person that has supported to this stage, but you can't go further. In order, you know, to support the student further, they need to reach out or need to seek additional help. And one thing you can do then is offer those resources and have them ready in order to offer those resources to the students.

21:06So I think it was, you know, on the one hand, I enjoyed that training because it was quite eye opening in regards to maybe some concrete steps that are still within your control and that you can do. And it gave us that kind of confidence in using those steps, but it also acknowledged that there may be a limit to how much you actually can do and should be doing. And I think that was really important, actually. Yeah.

21:36And I mean, you know, I feel very strongly about how empowering those kinds of training can be. I mean, there's always going to be a grey zone. There's always going to be an uncertainty of the way you draw that line for yourself, either as an individual or as an educator within a special context. And I've had some very good discussions with colleagues where completing that kind of training could be seen by some as thus taking a responsibility.

22:12on that you didn't sign up for. And I understand people's kind of concern around that. But from my perspective, I want to know that if I'm in that situation, I have the skills to cope. So I do that training and I organize that training as an opportunity for people to know that they have the confidence to deal with it if they're in it. And I've done the further training for the more kind of extreme cases.

22:44And it's very difficult. And it's something I hope I never have to use. But I'd rather have that than a lack of certainty that I will be able to respond to somebody in that situation. I agree. I think it gave us a good structure to work around, to have a good framework, which I think in any situation of crisis or those extreme situations, if you can go back to a clear structure,

23:20providing help, supporting students and so on is facilitated. Yeah. Yeah. And by doing a course and having a certificate in your office, you're not going out into the street and therapy. Exactly. No, absolutely. No, absolutely not. So, but your second study, your second study you did in primary schools? Yeah. So we were reaching out to educators who were predominantly based in primary schools.

23:51Again, we kept this anonymous. This was purely qualitative. So we gave people the opportunity to, you know, to confidently and confidentially share their experiences. And very similar experience of becoming back to us. And these kind of active voices were identifying possibly more in this context that pupil trauma was a really difficult thing to isolate, to step away from, to create boundaries, to protect yourself.

24:28Because, you know, when you have a large classroom of children and some of those children are coming from extremely difficult situations, you have much more contact with students in this contact than, you know, say we might have in higher education. So they're day in, day out seeing these students and knowing the situations that they might be existing in. So pupil trauma was a really big factor for primary educators. Having students in the classrooms with more complex needs and just generally the level of workload that primary educators are facing and the lack of resources, either on a practical level, on a support level.

25:08These are all the major stresses that contributed to capacity. And it really did highlight those consequences that we talked about earlier, of the physical and the mental strain, the inability to kind of turn yourself off at the end of the day. So obviously the impact that has to your own family and your own relationships. And people were talking about guilt about bringing it home and then having nothing left to give to their own children.

25:39And it really contributing to a lot of emotional consequences and potentially some unsafe working conditions for their own things. But we've got some rays of sunshine within this as well. And then suddenly it's gloomy. So let's stick with the gloomy for a little bit and then we go maybe into what can we do to overcome this or to cope with this or to avoid it altogether. But before that, what is the conclusion for you from both of your studies on that topic?

26:13Well, essentially, educators are vulnerable. If you have a high degree of student-facing support within your role, you are at risk of this. But it's very under-researched for this particular group of people. But essentially, despite the different contexts, no matter what kind of context people are in, we have a very consistent pattern that high empathic demands, combined with perhaps inadequate institutional support or management,

26:50does have very significant consequences for wellbeing, for performance, and ultimately for retention. Okay. So you have validated the points that you found in different research done in different contexts in the education context as well. Yeah. The consequences look very similar across the context. It's just the risk factors that are specific to that. Yeah. That's interesting. Okay.

27:20So let's move on to practical implication.

Practical Implications and Coping Strategies

27:22So what are some concrete tips that you have for educators to cope or even avoid compassion fatigue? Okay. Well, I think obviously awareness is going to be a very key factor in this. Awareness that this is a phenomenon that exists and you may be at risk of. I do want to offer a counterpoint as well. So this is all the negative consequence of doing this kind of work. There is a rare breed of very lucky people who don't necessarily experience compassion fatigue, but can experience compassion satisfaction.

27:59So there's some people that really thrive in these environments and thrive doing this kind of work. And I think a wonderful strain of research might be really identifying these people within an education context and maybe distilling them into some kind of antidote for the rest of us. But they're obviously doing something. They're getting something out of it. They have a level of protective factor that is minimizing their vulnerability to a lot of these very systemic risk factors.

28:29This isn't just, just like we have post-traumatic stress. Some people experience post-traumatic growth. And I think that is ultimately a potential happy ending for a lot of people that we just need to know is possible. But being aware that if you are in one of these kinds of roles, you are at risk of this is the first step to having that insight, having the ability to self-reflect and having a bit of awareness about what you're experiencing, why, and how it might be manifesting.

29:04So I'm a very, very big believer in practicing self-compassion and where possible, compartmentalizing work and personal activities. So being very boundaried and structured in what you do. Really trying to minimize this almost addiction cycle. You know, it may not be kind of a dopamine reward, but you're getting a reward from doing your job well, helping people, and feeling good about it.

29:34And being mindful that you don't want to get yourself into a situation where you are doing that to feel positive that neglecting all your needs and everything else that might be going on in your life. So I think there is a risk of almost an addiction cycle in this kind of support role. So, yeah, identifying very concrete methods that are going to be individual to every person that will be opportunities for you to find a respite and to regulate.

30:10What's yours? Well, okay. I mean, you can do it hard. I'm fine. I think it's important to distinguish between kind of mentally regulating, emotionally regulating, physically regulating. So I'm not a runner by any means, but I do. At the end of a very, very stressful day, I know on a physiological level, on a physical level, my body is out of sorts. So I will try and go for a brisk walk or hit the treadmill for 20, 30 minutes.

30:43And it's just to bring my physical state to, I don't want to say homeostasis, you know, physical state to a point where you have exerted yourself and then it will start to come back down and feel a little bit more even keel. So I try to be aware of the physical symptoms and do something physical to kind of bring myself back to a bit of a reset. Mentally and emotionally, I think it's unique to the individual, whatever brings you peace, whatever brings you a level of mindfulness, dancing, creating, make jewelry.

31:24I like to kind of sew every now and again. Anything that can help you switch off completely. Audiobook. You know my addiction there. Anything that will help you disengage is an opportunity for respite and regulation. But obviously, like I mentioned previously, education and upskilling, again, not to make you feel like you have a responsibility for this, but for your own self-confidence and preparedness, I think it's very important.

31:58But I kind of want to wrap this up in terms of the practical implications is to make sure that people don't think that the onus of responsibility here is not on us as individuals to just cope, no matter what. We are often in contexts and situations that realistically we shouldn't be in. So, yes, there is a level of, you know, individual management, individual regulation, but ideally it is the context of the situation, the system that should be not placing us at this kind of risk.

32:35So ideally through management, organizational structure, and greater support and resources for both students and staff, this should be tackled at more of a macro level, more of an institutional level. And all of the research today really does call for a systematic recognition that compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress is an occupational hazard. Yeah. Especially in education and obviously in healthcare as well.

33:08But there needs to be an implementation of organizational strategies to tackle this at a top-down level. Yeah. Or just up to us to cope, struggle and to get through if we can. Yeah. I think you're right. I think very often you can be in that mindset that you are the one who needs to solve this now. You are the responsible person. You have the, that's your task.

33:40That is your job to do this right now. And kind of maybe you did it in the beginning and you thought, okay, I did it once. Now I do it again. I do this kind of support. I give it my all and so on. And it becomes normal. It becomes the thing that you do on a daily basis. And at some point, I think, as you said as well, when you start talking about it to others, maybe they have the same experience, but maybe you will, you know, you will talk to someone who will say, sorry, but how is this?

34:11This is not how it should be. You are taking lots on responsibility. You are overstretching yourself. And that can be quite eye opening. And in order to do that, you need to actually engage in help seeking, which sometimes we probably, we think it's not for us. You know, we will just, we just handle that. But I think to show that kind of vulnerability and say, this is what I've been doing. Do you do the same thing?

34:42Am I doing too much? Is that experience that I'm having with this right now? It's not doing me any good or kind of, I'm feeling very exhausted from it. So maybe we can find the solution together as a department, at a school, at a school and so on. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think definitely having an openness and communication about this, whether it is, you know, venting for catharsis to your colleagues, very effective regulation. As long as you don't get to a point where it just, you know, creates this never ending loop of negativity, just getting it out in one way or another is a necessity.

35:22So having those conversations on a more formal level, at an earlier time point, maybe to say, this isn't working. You know, I'm not feeling comfortable either with the responsibilities I'm being given or how prepared I feel to address them. Having that openness at all levels of management. You know, it's the only way that people will then know that they need to do better. Yeah. And provide more support.

35:52All right. Okay. Is there anything else you want to add? If anybody is interested in this topic and, you know, wants to connect, then that would be great. It's not one of my major areas of research activities, but I think it's a desperately needed one and one I think that is extremely relatable for anybody that is an educator. But yeah, I'd love to have more conversations about it. Just out of curiosity, and I don't know if you have mentioned it, but do you have a preprint on the project? So anything we can share more formally or is it work in progress at the moment?

36:26Work in progress, but if anybody's interested in reading the dissertations themselves, I'm happy to share the few episodes. They're not quite in a preprint stage, but yeah, I'm happy to share. Yeah. All right. Maybe we can link that to the podcast episode in the blog below. All right. So I would like to thank you, Chiara, for joining our episode today and sharing your tips. I think many of us can probably identify with that feeling of compassion fatigue and maybe have a better understanding of it now and a better way of dealing with it and managing it maybe in the future.

37:11So that's fantastic. So thank you very much for this. And I wish you a very successful academic year with very little compassion fatigue and lots of energy. Always nice to be here. And yeah, let's just go with surviving this year and then anything else is a win. All right. To all of our listeners, thank you for joining the episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Stay safe. And until next time, goodbye.

37:41This episode is funded by listeners like you. To support our work and gain access to exclusive content, visit our Patreon page at www.patreon.com slash learning scientists.