This aimed to examine the levels of emotional labour and compassion fatigue among Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and National Medical Rescue Team (UMKE) personnel deployed in disaster zones, and to explore their associations with sociodemographic and occupational factors. This cross-sectional study was conducted between January and May 2024 among 405 EMS and UMKE personnel working in Ankara, Konya, Kayseri, and Antalya, Türkiye. Data were collected using a demographic form, the Compassion Fatigue Scale, and the Emotional Labour Scale. Construct validity was evaluated via confirmatory factor analysis with 10,000 bootstrap resamples, and reliability was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha. Group comparisons were performed using appropriate parametric and non-parametric tests with Bonferroni adjustment, while associations between variables were examined using Spearman’s correlation and regression analyses. Significant differences in compassion fatigue and its subdimensions were observed by age, gender, marital status, education level, working style, and professional title (p < 0.05). Emotional labour scores also varied significantly by age, gender, marital status, education level, and working style (p < 0.05). According to Spearman’s correlation analysis, significant associations were observed between compassion fatigue (and its subdimensions) and emotional labour (and its subdimensions) (p < 0.005). At the total-scale level, compassion fatigue was positively correlated with emotional labour (r = 0.282, p < 0.001), indicating a small-to-moderate relationship. In multiple regression, emotional labour subdimensions explained 18.4% of the variance in compassion fatigue (R²=0.184; Adj R²=0.178; p < 0.001), and surface acting was the only significant positive predictor (β = 0.401, p < 0.001). Findings indicate that compassion fatigue is associated with emotional labour—particularly surface acting—and varies across key demographic and occupational subgroups, suggesting the need for targeted psychosocial support for disaster responders.
Taskan et al. (Fri,) studied this question.