TPC Journal-Vol 9- Issue 4-FULL ISSUE

292 The Professional Counselor | Volume 9, Issue 4 Table 3 Hierarchical Regression Analysis Results for Variables Predicting Compassion Fatigue Variables B SEB β R 2 Δ R 2 Step 1 .002 -.01 Empathy -.09 .21 -.05 Step 2 .004 -.02 Empathy -.10 .21 -.05 SWA .33 .91 .04 Step 3 .30* .26 Empathy -.03 .19 -.02 SWA .36 .78 .04 Wellness -.39 .14 -.30* Resilience -3.66 1.05 -.36* Note . SWA = Supervisory Working Alliance *p < .05. Discussion In this study, CITs reported having a low risk of compassion fatigue. When we examined the Burnout and STS scores separately, the main contributors of compassion fatigue (Stamm, 2010), both subscale scores indicated participants having a low risk for STS and Burnout. This finding is similar to results found by Beaumont and colleagues (2016) in their study of compassion fatigue, burnout, self- compassion, and well-being relationships among student counselors and student cognitive behavioral psychotherapists. According to their research findings, a total of 54 student participants reported high scores on self-compassion and well-being and reported less compassion fatigue and burnout (Beaumont et al., 2016). One of the goals of this study was to seek understanding of whether wellness and resilience explain a statistically significant amount of variance in compassion fatigue among CITs after accounting for empathy and supervisory working alliance. The results indicated that empathy and supervisory working alliance were not significant predictors of compassion fatigue. Regarding empathy and compassion fatigue relation results, the findings of this study did not support Figley’s (1995) assumption of empathy as one of the main contributors to compassion fatigue. This result also is inconsistent with Wagaman and colleagues’ (2015) results indicating a significant association between empathy and compassion fatigue among social workers. However, current results aligned with those studies that found no correlation between empathy and compassion fatigue (e.g., O’Brien & Haaga, 2015; Thomas & Otis, 2010). An explanation of the variability between this inquiry and previous studies might lie with the difference between participants’ field of study and measurement differences. Also, none of the previous studies used CITs solely as their sample, nor used a similar way to measure the construct of empathy. Additionally, CITs would have less experience working with clients compared to experienced counselors, and thus less time for feelings of compassion fatigue to build.