Compassion fatigue in laboratory animal personnel: a bibliometric analysis of global trends

Abstract

Laboratory animal personnel face enormous pressures such as workload, conflicts, deadlines, lack of psychological support, and ethical dilemmas. These pressures are often due to the need to balance scientific objectives, ethical responsibilities, and personal emotions, while trying to maintain legal and institutional animal housing and care standards. When these profession-related pressures are exacerbated by toxic social relationships and financial challenges, it may lead to chronic stress that will ultimately cause compassion fatigue. This review aimed to analyse publication trends on compassion fatigue among laboratory animal personnel by undertaking a bibliometric analysis of published articles to produce insights that could inform future research strategies. A literature search was carried out via the Scopus databases for articles published in English. The data collected from the search was transferred to the Bibliometrix R-package and assessed for publication trends, analysis of contributing countries, thematic evolution, and the co-occurrence of authors’ keywords. Seventeen articles published between 2015 and 2024 were retrieved for analysis. Among these, 14 were survey studies and 3 were literature reviews. The number of articles published is on an upward trend, with all authors being affiliated with Global North institutions. The keyword analysis identified 53 words. The most common term used was ‘compassion fatigue’ (CF) and the analysis indicated that technicians and veterinarians are the primary target populations for CF research. The modest rise in the body of literature on CF and mental health issues among laboratory animal personnel is commendable and I encourage more work to be done to better understand this complex phenomenon.