Sustaining Those Who Serve: Exploring Compassion Fatigue and Resilience in Policing

Sustaining Those Who Serve: Exploring Compassion Fatigue and Resilience in Policing

In the demanding world of policing, resilience is more than a buzzword—it’s a lifeline. Acting Senior Sergeant Peter Romanis (Victoria Police) has explored the realities of compassion fatigue and the urgent need to foster resilience among officers. Drawing from personal experience, global research and new intervention strategies, his insights offer a roadmap for sustainable wellbeing in law enforcement.

Policing is a profession built on empathy and service, but this very strength can become a vulnerability. A/Sen. Sgt. Romanis describes compassion fatigue as the ‘cost of caring’; a gradual erosion of empathy and energy that arises from repeated exposure to trauma and relentless organisational pressures. Unlike a single critical incident, compassion fatigue is often the result of cumulative stress, where officers find themselves ‘just a bit off,’ no longer feeling like themselves despite performing their duties.

Compassion fatigue sits at the crossroads of two forces: secondary traumatic stress (the human side, shaped by exposure to suffering and loss) and burnout (the organisational side, driven by pace, paperwork and pressure). When these collide, officers may continue to function but lose the sense of fulfillment and connection that drew them to the job.

Evidence-Based Interventions

Recognising the need for solutions, A/Sen. Sgt. Romanis embarked on doctoral research to map global interventions for compassion fatigue. Reviewing 27 studies from North America, Europe and Asia, he found that the most effective programs share three key themes:

1. Self-Regulation: The ability to manage stress responses in real time is foundational. These are not ‘soft skills’—they are operational necessities that reduce stress, burnout and anger, while improving physiological markers like heart rate variability.
2. Leadership and Culture: Programs succeed when leaders actively support them, provide protected time for practice and frame regulation as professional readiness rather than therapy. When supervisors model these behaviours, stigma fades and culture shifts.
3. Prevention Over Reaction: Skills learned before a crisis are far more protective than reactive debriefings or short awareness sessions. Resilience is built in advance, not in the aftermath.

A New Approach for Australian Policing

For the first time, an evidence-based, skills-focused compassion fatigue workshop will be trialled and evaluated with Australian police. Grounded in trauma science and already proven in nursing and mental health settings, this intervention teaches five core elements: self-regulation, intentionality, perceptual maturation, connection and support and revitalisation. Officers will learn to steady themselves amid chaos, recharge and build peer networks for support.

The program is designed for those experiencing compassion fatigue—those in the ‘yellow and orange’ zones of the mental health continuum, not yet in crisis but at risk of sliding further.

It’s ‘treatment through training,’ aiming to restore officers to a healthy state and sustain them for the long term.

The Path Forward

A/Sen. Sgt. Romanis’s research is structured across four phases: a systematic review, intervention delivery, longitudinal assessment and thesis submission. The goal is not a quick fix but lasting change—building evidence to shape how police organisations support their people. As A/Sen. Sgt. Romanis reminds us, resilience is found in the moment where officers can choose how to show up, even in the face of adversity. By investing in prevention, leadership and practical skills, policing can move beyond surviving the job to truly sustaining those who serve.

This editorial draws directly from the ANZPAA Police Conference 2025 presentation Sustaining Those Who Serve: Exploring Compassion Fatigue and Resilience in Policing, presented by Acting Senior Sergeant Peter Romanis (Victoria Police)

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