RESEARCH_FILE
Compassion Fatigue Cycle
The compassion fatigue cycle describes the progressive emotional numbing and secondary traumatic stress that accumulates in clinicians through repeated exposure to patient suffering — especially at the scale typical of intensive care. Defined by Figley in 1995 and quantified in ICU populations by Van Mol et al. in 2015 (up to 40% prevalence in some samples), it is an occupational phenomenon, not a symptom of insufficient caring or deficient moral character.
How it sounds in your head
The inner script: 'I used to cry when a patient died. Now I feel nothing and that terrifies me — I must be becoming a worse person.' The research reads it differently: emotional numbing after sustained high-exposure caregiving is the organism's protective adaptation, not a character change. The absence of feeling is the fatigue cycle's output, not the clinician's choice.