Cancer is one of the most important chronic diseases threatening human health today and the second leading cause of morbidity worldwide.1 The life-threatening nature of most cancers, the difficulty of treatment and decision-making, and the link between cancer and death make caring for cancer patients exceedingly stressful.2 As a member of the healthcare team, oncology nurses play an important role in providing physical, emotional, and spiritual care to patients with serious, life-threatening diseases.3 Studies show that the professional quality of life of oncology nurses is affected by the caregiving process.1,4 Continued exposure to patient death can cause oncology nurses a deep sense of loss that might result in burnout.4

“Professional quality of life”, which describes the positive and negative aspects of working life, indicates work-related stress.5 It has two dimensions: compassion satisfaction (CS) and compassion fatigue (CF). CS, which indicates the positive aspect of professional quality of life, is the pleasure that an individual experiences while helping others. CF, which constitutes the negative aspect of professional quality of life, is a form of secondary traumatic stress (STS) and burnout.6 Burnout stressors relate to work environment and workload, whereas STS relates to direct exposure or witness to traumatic situations, although the two share similar symptomatology and often appear together.7 CF, defined as the negative impact of helping individuals who have experienced traumatic events or are suffering, adversely affects nurse physical and mental health, job performance, and satisfaction and causes high rates of turnover and nurse shortages, decreased productivity, medication errors, negative patient outcome, and financial burden on healthcare organizations. Burnout ranks first among the problems affecting patient safety.8 In a systematic review of 71 studies, Cavanagh9 found that among healthcare providers, nurses are particularly prone to CF. A recent systematic review by Xie et al8 that included 21 studies of CF in oncology nurses showed that oncology nurses were at “moderate” risk of CS, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress and 22% had “high” risk of CF. Kaneko et al10 found 83.2% of oncology nurses experienced stress due to their work.

CF has drawn a lot of attention in recent years due to growing evidence that it is detrimental to nurses' physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being.8 Literature examining the methods of interventional studies conducted to prevent CF in oncology nurses reports that two of the most effective initiatives are institutional arrangements (organizational support, regulations on workload, patient–nurse ratios, or working hours) and training programs.11,12 A study using structural equation modeling to examine the effect of resilience and other factors on burnout levels of nurses found that resilience and job satisfaction inversely affected burnout levels and that burnout decreased as resilience increased. In accordance with these results, research to examine the resilience of nurses and how it can be improved is urged.13 The Compassion Fatigue Resiliency Program (CFRP) is an effective and comprehensive training program aimed at preventing CF and increasing psychological resilience. The literature reports that learning useful strategies for stress management in private and professional lives benefits nurses.14,15 CFRP has been applied to oncology nurses, nurse managers, emergency nurses, and newly recruited nurses.15, 16, 17, 18, 19 CFRP's results are contradictory in preventing CF and reducing the stress of nurses, suggesting it should be reviewed in depth, particularly with qualitative studies.16 CF, burnout, and stress are reported to adversely affect patient outcomes, but no studies have been found evaluating the effect of CFRP, on patient satisfaction.