Empathy in nursing is more than just a nice skill to have; it’s what patients look for from caregivers. Empathy has a major role in safe client care, positive outcomes, building rapport, and even job satisfaction. But what does empathy mean in nursing, and how can you practice empathy as a nurse?
Empathy vs. Sympathy in Nursing: What’s the difference?
These differences between these two terms often spark debates and confusion. While they’re often used interchangeably, they’re actually very different.
- Sympathy is understanding someone’s suffering as a response to their situation while remaining detached from their experience. It doesn’t affect you directly.
- Empathy is the ability to intellectually and emotionally understand someone’s perspective, how they feel and think, and directly relating to and sharing those feelings.
Approaching client encounters with compassion is also an empathic response, but it’s more focused on the willingness to pursue clients’ well-being in a therapeutic way.
Why is empathy important for nurses to develop?
As you become a nurse, you learn to connect with the client intellectually to provide individualized, quality care. You also need to connect emotionally with each client to provide care to not only their physical well-being but also their emotional well-being.
This empathetic response helps you alleviate suffering and build a trusting relationship with those in your care, ensuring their safety, outcomes, and compliance. It’s also essential to your growth, well-being, efficiency, teamwork, and collaboration skills.
How Clients Benefit from Nurses Who Practice Empathy
1. Lower client distress
Clients are much more at ease when they feel you’re aware of their feelings and answering their questions. Your empathetic listening creates safe, honest, and trusting communication, where they feel heard and can deal better with difficult emotions, leading to better patient outcomes.
2. Higher client satisfaction
According to a study on client experience, empathy ranked better for clients than pain management, room environment, or outcomes of care as measures of satisfaction. For clients, active listening and an empathetic approach nurture a positive perception of the quality of their experience.
3. Increased client compliance
When you respond empathically, clients tend to share more accurate and in-depth medical histories. They also feel more satisfied and compliant with their medical regimen because they trust you.
4. Positive health outcomes
A lack of empathy can lead to dangerous communication failures. So empathy not only decreases the risk of client harm but also lowers anxiety and distress, ensuring hope, compliance, and better outcomes. An example of this includes quicker healing in clients with diabetes or the common cold.
→ Get more tips on empathetic listening for clinicians.
The Benefits of Empathy
1. Fewer Malpractice Complaints
Caring for clients with warmth, kindness, and reassurance while communicating transparently, in addition to understanding their feelings, is an effective way to avoid malpractice claims.
2. Emotional Resilience
Empathic communication is also associated with good health, resilience, and well-being because it helps you regulate and recognize your own emotions.
3. Increased Professional Satisfaction
A small level of emotional attunement is beneficial for your professional quality of life. At the same time, seeing positive results in your practice gives you a great sense of success in the long run.
4. Increased Efficiency
Nurses who are aware of each client’s needs and are attentive to routine tasks can prevent medical errors or injuries. Empathy also increases client compliance, which helps reduce readmission rates and potential costs.
Where and How to Have Empathy
There are many opportunities to gain empathic experience in nursing. Nurses are the health care workers who spend the majority of their time with the clients, this provides ample opportunity to improve your empathic response. But how can you learn to practice it? The first step is to show genuine curiosity and ask.
- Be curious: let’s say you meet with a client who is sitting back, distracted, or anxiously looking down. “Is there something on your mind you want to talk about?” is a great start for you.
- Check your feelings: let’s say you are in a good mood and you meet with a client who looks depressed. It’s best to adjust your feelings and ask kindly: “Are you feeling down? Because I can sense it.”
- Listen: you often meet with families as well. Let’s say you talk to a parent, and their teenager is angry or rolling their eyes. Try to get their experience and ask: “Hey, why don’t you tell me what happened? I want to hear it from you.”
- Show empathy: let’s say you meet a client who’s frustrated because they went to other doctors before and didn’t get help. You can show understanding and say: “I cannot imagine how frustrating it can be, but it matters, and I’m sorry it happened.”
These examples are about setting aside your own perceptions of the client’s experience, identifying non-verbal cues from your clients, and inquiring about experiences to gain a better understanding. This process is not easy, but that’s why you want to keep practicing!
Empathy is as Easy as Spelling N.U.R.S.E.
There are a few barriers to empathy in nursing communication: the high number of clients to care for, the short time you have for each of them, and a lack of proper education in empathy.
However, clients appreciate not necessarily what you say or do but how you say and do it. Here is a tool you can use to respond to your clients with empathy:
- Name or mirror the emotion (Ex: “You seem very stressed.”)
- Understand the emotion (Ex: “It can be stressful to wait for your blood tests when it’s about your health.”)
- Respect the client (Ex: “You did a great job with telling us how you feel and coming here to do these tests.”)
- Support the client using powerful words (Ex: “I will let you know about your results as soon as we have them, and we’ll decide the next steps together.”)
- Explore the emotion further (Ex: “Is there something else on your mind that bothers you?”)
Learning empathy takes time. But with patience, practice, and the best learning experience with Osmosis, you’ll be able to help your clients and enjoy your profession.
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