Material Detail

Compassion fatigue and moral conflicts among police officersThe prominent role of moral conflicts in trauma is highlighted by many trauma scholars (e.g., Litz et al., 2009) who suggest that current post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnostic criteria do not efficiently capture the phenomenon of “inner conflict” or moral conflict in police officers' exposure to traumatic incidents (Nash & Litz, 2013). In his seminal book “Treating compassion fatigue,” Vietnam veteran and trauma research professor Figley (2002) mentioned that compassion fatigue refers to a type of secondary traumatic stress that emanates from frontline professionals’ “cost of caring” for those who suffer psychological pain. Further, Figley (2002) noted that compassion fatigue is related to professional caregivers' cognitive schemata; some of those cognitive schemata are akin to frontline professionals’ morale. Based on Figley’s (2002) perspective, it seems that compassion fatigue is cognitively related to moral conflicts experienced by first responders in the line of duty. Moral distress and police workMoral distress was first talked about by nursing professionals and scholars who emphasized the challenging moral moments that nurses experience when they provide care to patients and their families (Elpern, Covert, & Kleinpell, 2005). To date, caregiving professionals such as occupational therapists (Penny et al., 2016) and social workers (Mänttäri-van der Kuip, 2016) have emphasized the incapacitating ro...

This will delete the comment from the database. This operation is not reversible. Are you sure you want to do it?

Thank you for reporting a broken "Go to Material" link in MERLOT to help us maintain a collection of valuable learning materials.

If you feel this material is inappropriate for the MERLOT Collection, please click SEND REPORT, and the MERLOT Team will investigate. Thank you!

You are being taken to the material on another site. This will open a new window.

Do not show me this again