During my time at clinical the past five weeks, I learned and witnessed a lot that I can carry with me throughout my career as a nurse. This includes skills that I have learned in the lab being done on real patients, the way healthcare providers collaborate, medications being administered, and much more. One thing I observed that stands out the most is the empathy and compassion that came alongside the care that the patients received. Empathy and compassion are vital tools for a healthcare worker and can make all the difference for their patients. Not only was I able to see empathy and compassion coming from the nurses, but I was also able to apply it to all my patients whom I interacted with. The experiences I had with these patients allowed me to grow as a student nurse and taught me skills and caring behaviors that I will continue to incorporate into my clinical care throughout my career.
When a patient is admitted to a healthcare facility, oftentimes it means they are going through a troublesome period in their life, which can lead the client to feel emotional and lonesome. This is where providing empathy and compassion can make a world of difference. In Taylors’ text, empathy is defined as the “objective understanding of the way in which a patient sees his or her situation, identifying with the way another person feels, putting oneself in another person’s circumstances and imagining what it would be like to share that person’s feelings; (2) intellectually identifying with the way another person feels” (Taylor, Lynn, & Bartlett, 2018). Compassion on the other hand is defined as “a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering” (Compassion, 2020). Empathy is when you put yourself in someone’s position while compassion is then feeling sorry for them and wanting to help them through it.
Empathy and compassion can be highlighted in Watson’s 10 Carative factors. The 10 Carative factors include:1.The formation of a humanistic-altruistic system, 2. The installation of faith-hope, 3. The cultivation of sensitivity to one’s self and to others, 4. Development of a helping-trusting, human caring relation, 5. The promotion and acceptance of the expression of positive and negative feelings, 6. The systemic use of a creative problem solving caring process, 7. The promotion of transpersonal teaching-learning, 8. The provision of supportive, protective, and/or corrective mental, physical, societal and spiritual environment, 9. The assistance with gratification of human needs, and 10. The allowance for existential-phenomenological spiritual forces (Gonzalo, 2019). All 10 factors are just pieces to the overarching theme of caring for patients in the clinical setting, and empathy and compassion are woven into these Carative factors. For example, Watson’s fourth factor is about sustaining a helping trusting, authentic caring relationship, as a nurse, to form this relationship it helps to be caring and empathetic towards you patients. (Repeat sentence) When you practice empathy and compassion in the clinical setting it can alter the mindset of the patient. This could be making them feel like they are not alone, holding their hand in a time of disparity, listening to their story, not disregarding their feelings, and more. By implementing these subtle acts of empathy and compassion we are able to help our patients beyond the physical aspect. We are taught in nursing school to treat the whole patient. Taking care patients emotionally by showing empathy and compassion is a huge step in treating the whole patient and can make a big difference for them while they are staying in the hospital, as well as improve overall patient outcomes.
In clinical this semester I was able to provide a patient and their partner with empathetic and compassionate care early on. My first day of clinical I got the chance to shadow a nurse, and one of the patients that the nurse was caring for was being discharged. I learned after talking to the patient and the patients partner that the patient had been hospitalized for almost a year. The patient was pricked and prodded at, transferred to several different hospitals, and went through a year of pain and exhaustion that was truly heartbreaking. Through this experience of simply talking to my patient and their partner and lending an ear to listen to their story, I feel that I provided empathy and compassion. I told the patient that not long ago I was hospitalized for a week and I could relate to much of what they were telling me. I proceeded to tell them my experiences being hospitalized, and we conversed on how it made each of us feel. By empathizing with them, I feel like they felt heard and understood. Sometimes it is not the big gestures that make a difference to patients, but rather the smaller more intimate moments. By being there for my client and communicating my compassion towards them, I feel like I made a difference even in their last hour of being there. In the future, I will have more experiences with patients and their families and can use this particular moment as a learning experience. After reflecting on that moment, I feel that going forward I can work on improving my response by asking more open-ended questions and not bringing so much focus on myself. I think that being empathetic and compassionate means to be open to people’s specific narratives, and not fitting everything and everyone into a box. Everyone’s stories and situations are unique, so in the future it will benefit my patients if I explore their individual stories, as just that, individual.
In the future, I can incorporate caring behaviors in my clinical care in a number of ways such as: holding a patient’s hand in a time of distress, sitting down with them when they get lonely or depressed, utilizing eye contact and therapeutic touch in all conversations, cracking light-hearted jokes with them now and then. These are just a few simple ways I can positively impact my patients and hopefully improve their experience and overall outcome. To be a great nurse I want to instill kindness, trust, honesty, cultivation of all needs and sensitivities, promote positive and negative feelings, provide education and support of healing, and assist with all basic care needs for my patients, similar to what Watson envisioned when creating The Theory of Caring.
