Prevalence of compassion fatigue among counsellors in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya

Abstract

Counsellors absorb the emotional pain and trauma of their clients as they deal with their sufferings. This leads to diminished empathy and compassion fatigue. In light of this concern this study aimed at determining the prevalence of compassion fatigue among counsellors in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya. The study adopted the embedded mixed method approach where the Ex-post facto and phenomenological designs were used. A census was used to obtain the sample of participants where 97 counsellors practicing in Uasin Gishu County participated in the study. Using critical case criteria 5 counsellors were purposively sampled for qualitative approach. Data was collected using the Professional Quality of Life Version 5 (ProQoL-5) and an in-depth interview guide for qualitative data. Quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS Version 26.0. All the inferential statistics were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study found that the 52.6% of the respondents had low compassion fatigue. The study concluded that compassion fatigue was prevalent among counsellors in Uasin Gishu county though none of the participants recorded high levels of compassion fatigue and therefore recommended that counsellor should be made aware of the risk of compassion fatigue on their wellbeing and the need to employ professional intervention such as clinical supervision as a management strategy.