ReviewFrontiers in public health2026
Digital compassion fatigue in nurses: an evolutionary concept analysis.
Review in Frontiers in public health, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Electronic health records, telehealth and home monitoring are changing the psychosocial conditions of nursing work, and digital compassion fatigue in nurses has recently been proposed to describe compassion fatigue that may evolve within technology-mediated care. Direct evidence remains minimal, comprising two concept studies and one commentary, and the boundaries with compassion fatigue, burnout, technostress, moral distress and digital fatigue are unsettled. This study applied Rodgers' evolutionary concept analysis, which, unlike approaches that fix defining attributes at a single point in time, treats concepts as provisional and traces their development across time, disciplines and contexts; to our knowledge it is the first evolutionary analysis of this concept. PubMed, Embase and EBSCOhost (CINAHL Ultimate; Academic Search Premier) were searched to 2 August 2026, identifying 545 records (287 after cross-database de-duplication), supplemented by purposive sampling of adjacent literatures to saturation, citation tracking and hand searching; 38 concept-related papers were included. Five defining attributes are proposed as theoretical propositions rather than established findings: specificity to technology-mediated care; persistent post-encounter emotional exhaustion; compassion withdrawal and relational detachment; cognitive overload during digital interaction; and diminished therapeutic presence and professional efficacy. Each attribute is anchored in the direct conceptual literature and corroborated only by adjacent empirical evidence; proposed antecedents and consequences likewise rest largely on adjacent evidence and are presented as hypotheses rather than causal claims. The principal limitation is the near absence of direct evidence. Digital compassion fatigue is therefore best treated as a provisional working concept, possibly a context-specific subtype of compassion fatigue rather than a new construct, pending tests of discriminant validity. The analysis contributes an attribute-level evidence map, a testable working definition and candidate indicators to guide instrument development and occupational-health-oriented prevention research.
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Registered trials
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