Nurses and Empathy
Considerable attention has been paid to "empathy" in nursing, and the concept of empathy is firmly embedded in nursing discourse. However, little is known about the details of how nurses show empathy to their patients. The study is one that aims to conduct a qualitative study of actual nurse-patient conversations in which empathy was demonstrated.
Data for this study will be collected from
based on recordings of conversational sessions between nurses and patients in two Chinese hospitals. Participants in the study included six female nurses and 14 patients. Based on the classification of empathy in the Bachelor's degree (1988), this study described and analyzed actual empathic sequences in nursing conversations in order to demonstrate how nursing empathy was achieved interactionally using the method of conversation analysis. Focusing on the study of conversations in interaction, Conversation Analysis (CA) is a useful method for qualitative analysis of empathic conversations in nursing.
Results.
By utilizing previous theoretical research and empathic sequences in nursing, we described and analyzed some of the conversational resources nurses and patients used to achieve empathy. It has been shown that empathy can be achieved interactively and sequentially in a real sequence of conversations.
Specifically, nursing empathy is a co-constructed behavior rather than a committed behavior of the nurse herself that is generated in the context of a specific interaction.In conclusion, the results show that empathy is established in the mutual relationship between nurse and patient.
Wu, Y. Empathy in nurse-patient interaction: a conversation analysis. BMC Nurs 20, 18 (2021). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-021-00535-0
Conclusion
In this study, empathy in conversation has been analyzed by characterizing its cognitive, sharing, emotional, and nurturing nature. The study also found that empathy had an effect on patient outcomes, confirming the therapeutic desirability of acquiring empathy in didactic conversations.
From the conversations that were analyzed in the study, it was noted that empathy was not elicited by specific words, but rather by continuous reciprocal relationships. Thus, although it is often said that empathy is important in general, it has been suggested that empathy may not occur without a mutual relationship.
However, there are some limitations to the results for everyday use, such as the fact that the study did not show a relationship between empathy and all patient outcomes, and that the study only included female nurses.
Nevertheless, the part about interrelationship and continuum made sense to me, so if you are struggling with empathy, just knowing that it may be difficult to get immediate empathy may be useful in practice.
