Nursing is a large and growing profession. Nurses provide a critical service to patients and families, often in highly stressful work environments (McGibbon, Peter, & Gallop, 2010; Theme Filha, Costa, & Guilam, 2013). The stressful nature of nursing work, and particularly the intense suffering that nurses witness, puts nurses at risk for secondary traumatic stress (Beck & Gable, 2012; Morrison & Joy, 2016). Secondary traumatic stress is defined as the "natural consequent behaviors and emotions resulting from knowing about a traumatizing event" or "the stress resulting from helping or wanting to help a traumatized or suffering person" (Figley, 1995, p. 7). Nurses working on burn intensive care units face particularly traumatic content (Hilliard & O’Neill, 2010; Kellogg, Barker, & McCune, 2014; Martins et al., 2014), though they have not been the specific focus of a study on secondary traumatic stress. Furthermore, the counseling literature has not addressed the needs of nurses despite counselors being increasingly well positioned to advocate for and serve nurses with a rise in more comprehensively integrated care models (Crowley & Kirschner, 2015). This is a phenomenological qualitative study that used in-depth interviews with four nurses working at an accredited burn center in the Southeastern United States. Interviews were transcribed and then analyzed loosely based on Moustakas’ (1994) method. Five over-arching themes were found, including Suffering as Context, Adaptation to Suffering, Suffering the Reality of Limitations, Distinction through Suffering, and Sharing Suffering. The theme of Adaptation to Suffering had numerous subthemes, including Meaning Making, Empowerment through Knowledge, Compartmentalization, Enjoying Wound Care, and Preparedness to Restlessness. The theme of Distinction through Suffering had two subthemes, including Burn Insiders versus Burn Outsiders and Nursing as Territorial.
