Which term describes when a provider becomes overwhelmed by a patient's problems or grief?

The term that best describes the situation in which a provider becomes overwhelmed by a patient's problems or grief is compassion fatigue. This phenomenon occurs when caregivers experience a reduction in their ability to empathize or feel compassion for others due to the ongoing exposure to the suffering of patients. It is often a result of consistently absorbing the emotional pain and challenges that patients face, leading to a depletion of emotional resources.

Compassion fatigue is distinguished from other concepts like burnout, which typically refers to a more general state of exhaustion and disenchantment related to work conditions, not specifically tied to emotional engagement with patients. Emotional exhaustion is a component of burnout and focuses on the fatigue from various sources, while secondary trauma specifically refers to the trauma symptoms that arise from exposure to others' trauma, rather than the emotional depletion from caregiving itself as seen in compassion fatigue.