From Compassion Fatigue to Compassion Satisfaction: a research among physicians specialising in oncology at the University of Padua.

The quality of health workers' professional life includes some expressed or latent metacognition skills related to psycho-emotional stress management, especially in settings where there is constant contact with suffering or dying patients. The purpose of this study was to ascertain the quality and quantity of self-care strategies among oncology residents. Method: A professional educator administered the Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL), which measures compassion fatigue, burnout, and compassion satisfaction, and an ad hoc questionnaire. The ProQOL is a questionnaire developed and validated explicitly to detect the emotional experience and perceived work quality of professionals engaged in highexposure settings due to the onset of vicarious disorders. The ad hoc questionnaire proposed simple questions through which to get a picture of everyday life outside of work and to try to understand the self-care strategies that these residents implement. Results: Most of the residents involved were at risk of burnout and had low scores on the subscale of the test measuring satisfaction related to the pleasure of helping others. The study on oncology residents, known to be exposed daily to the risk of incurring vicarious disorders (Cheli, et al., 2017; IsHak et al., 2013; Rotenstein et al., 2016; Sinclair et al., 2016), confirmed the trend highlighted by a recent review of the literature (Panagioti et al., 2016).