Effects of a Prevention-Based Training on Compassion Fatigue and Compassion Satisfaction with Licensed Professional Counselor Interns in Texas

It is well documented that compassion fatigue is an occupational hazard experienced by professionals in the helping professions; namely, counselors. Research indicates there is a need for counselors to become educated early in their careers about the risks associated with compassion fatigue. The literature denotes that addressing certain constructs could assist helping professionals’ experience with compassion fatigue. Some of these constructs include compassion satisfaction, burnout, self-efficacy, empathy, personal distress, acting with awareness, and non-reacting. This dissertation was geared at examining compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction, burnout, self-efficacy, empathy, personal distress, acting with awareness, and non-reactivity in Licensed Professional Counselor Interns in Texas. A four-hour prevention-based training was utilized as the treatment intervention to determine if attendance would affect these constructs in novice helping professionals. In total, 60 participants were included in the current study. Participants self-selected into the treatment or control groups. All of the participants (N=60) completed the pre- and post-tests as well as either treatment group four hour prevention-based training or control group article. All participants answered items on the Professional Quality of Life Scale Version 5, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, the Five Factor Mindfulness Questionnaire, and the Counselor Activity Self-Efficacy Scales during both the pre- and post-testing. The current study proposed 8 hypotheses. The results indicated that the treatment and control groups were not significantly different from each other upon pre-test. The multivariate test of the dependent variables upon post-test was the primary statistic of interest. Seven of the main hypotheses from the study were supported; no difference in compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction, burnout, self-efficacy, personal distress, acting with awareness, and non-reactivity between the experimental and control groups. One of the main hypotheses were not supported: no difference in empathy between experimental and control groups. It is thought that attending the four-hour prevention-based trainings may have increased the Licensed Professional Counselor Interns’ awareness of the true struggles they experienced in the field, normalized these feelings for them, and elicited more honest, thoughtful answers on the post tests.