Nursing therapeutics: Teaching student nurses care, compassion and empathy

Abstract

Background: Debate continues regarding whether humanitarian values such as care and compassion can be taught or are innate in individuals who wish to become nurses.

Objectives: To undertake a discursive review of the literature on caring, compassion and empathy. To understand the teaching and learning issues associated with these concepts. To design and implement an Undergraduate Unit of study which addresses the development of caring, compassion and empathy in student nurses.

Methods/data sources: MEDLINE, CINAHL, and a wide range of literature including books and governmental reports were used for a discursive narrative review.

Results: Caring, compassion and empathy are ill-defined; however healthcare users are clear that they know when nurses use skills and attitudes associated with these concepts. Evidence is available to show that caring, compassion and empathy can be taught and there are tools available to measure them in neophytes through their training. Central to the androgogical embedding of these concepts into nursing curricula is the development of therapeutic relationships.

Conclusions: It is possible to develop materials to enable student nurses to learn how to care using compassion and empathy. Nursing therapeutics is a term devised to describe how student nurses can exploit the therapeutic potential of any patient contact especially when related to specific and routine nursing interventions. Muetzel's model for understanding therapeutic relationships is one framework that can be adopted to help student nurses to appreciate how to build patient relationships and encourage them to move towards therapeutic advantage using care, compassion and empathy.

Keywords: Caring; Compassion; Empathy; Nursing therapeutics; Therapeutic relationship.