Mental Health and Wellbeing in Palliative Care Professionals

Palliative care professionals operate at the intersection of life’s most profound challenges, providing holistic support to patients with life-limiting illness and their families. Their work demands sustained emotional engagement, rapid adaptation to complex clinical scenarios and regular confrontation with suffering and death. Such exposure places these practitioners at elevated risk of burnout, characterised by emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and reduced personal accomplishment. Concurrently, compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma may accumulate over time, undermining psychological resilience and compromising the quality of patient care. Moral distress arises when professionals are constrained from acting in accordance with their ethical convictions, further exacerbating emotional strain. Despite these pressures, many palliative care teams demonstrate remarkable resourcefulness, drawing on peer support, reflective practice and institutional interventions to bolster wellbeing. Globally, as populations age and the need for person-centred end-of-life care grows, safeguarding the mental health of this workforce has become a public health imperative. Effective strategies range from structured debriefing sessions and mindfulness-based interventions to organisational measures that foster supportive leadership, manageable workloads and professional development. Addressing the mental health of palliative care practitioners not only preserves workforce sustainability but also underpins the delivery of compassionate, high-quality care.

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Mental Health and Wellbeing in Palliative Care Professionals publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in mental health and wellbeing in palliative care professionals across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Burnout: A syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and diminished sense of personal efficacy resulting from chronic workplace stress.

Compassion fatigue: Emotional and physical exhaustion leading to a diminished capacity to empathise, often arising from prolonged exposure to suffering.

Vicarious trauma: The transformation in a professional’s inner experience resulting from empathetic engagement with individuals who have experienced trauma.

Moral distress: Psychological discomfort occurring when institutional constraints prevent practitioners from acting in accordance with ethical beliefs.

Resilience: The capacity to maintain or regain psychological wellbeing in the face of adversity and stress.

References

1. Burdens, resources, health and wellbeing of nurses working in general and specialised palliative care in Germany – results of a nationwide cross-sectional survey study. BMC Nursing (2021).
2. Palliative care nurses' experiences of stress, anxiety, and burnout: A thematic synthesis.. Palliative & Supportive Care (2022).
3. Hospice nurses’ emotional challenges in their encounters with the dying. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-Being (2016).
4. A novel mindful-compassion art therapy (MCAT) for reducing burnout and promoting resilience for end-of-life care professionals: a waitlist RCT protocol. Trials (2019).