Background: compassion fatigue is a phenomenon in areas of nursing practice such as oncology, ICU, palliative care, hospice, and dementia care, but less so among community nurses (Joinson, 1992). A gap in enquiry exists around CN and compassion fatigue around end-of-life patient care.
Methods: a scoping review with narrative analysis of selected literature on compassion fatigue in nursing using CINHAL, ProQuest, Science Direct, and the Cochrane Library.
Findings: whilst no specific studies were located on compassion fatigue and UK community nurses. Australian, Spanish, and Taiwanese studies report of environment, care relationship duration, resources and poor organisational support being linked to a likelihood of developing compassion fatigue.
Conclusion: compassion fatigue is under-researched in community nursing and merits further enquiry to understand the challenges posed by providing end-of-life care.
Keywords: District nursing; burnout; community nursing; compassion fatigue.