Janine Hockley

Nurses' delivery of compassionate and empathic care directly affects the experiences of patients. Nurses often work in difficult and complex organisational environments, with potential for experiencing negative outcomes such as compassion fatigue and burnout. The Quadruple Aim of Healthcare focuses on staff wellbeing as an important organisational consideration alongside delivery of quality patient care. The interplay between personal and organisational factors is key, as nurses' work-related stress and overwhelm has significant implications for substandard quality and safety of patient care, impacting an organisation's reputation for excellence, and risking poor health outcomes and reduced professional quality of life for nursing personnel.

Financial impacts of compassion fatigue and burnout is estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars, including lost productivity, poor performance, employee disengagement and poor physical and mental health. Ageing workforces; extended careers; growing work complexity; and transformational, yet positive disruptions in the advancement of healthcare service delivery will influence how nurses deliver on their roles and responsibilities into the future, providing care in an environment of continuous improvement, innovation, biofabrication, and digitalisation. Given the global shortage of skilled nursing staff, it is imperative to examine what factors facilitate and impede nurse satisfaction and wellbeing in order to prevent negative outcomes and exit from the workforce.