First used to describe the weariness the public felt toward media portrayals of societal crises, the term compassion fatigue has been taken up by health professionals to name--along with burnout, vicarious traumatization, compassion stress, and secondary traumatic stress--the condition of caregivers who become "too tired to care." Compassion, long seen as the foundation of ethical caring, is increasingly understood as a threat to the well-being of those who offer it.

Through the lens of hermeneutic phenomenology, the authors present an insider's perspective on compassion fatigue, its...