An Introduction to Psychological Care in Nursing and the Health Professions by Helena Priest

Author:Helena Priest [Priest, Helena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415429085
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-10-16T00:00:00+00:00

Unfortunately, it has been shown in numerous studies across different health care professions that health care staff, including nurses, do not show much empathy to patients and therefore probably operate at Level 1 or 2 for much of the time (see for example, Reynolds and Scott 2000). As a consequence, there can be unfavourable health outcomes if patients feel they have not been properly understood. Failure to understand their needs may result in nurses failing to provide important information or emotional support (Reynolds and Scott 2000), which in turn can lead to increased distress.

A consideration of empathy raises many questions. For example, can empathy be taught? To know whether it can be taught, we would need to have an effective way of measuring it so that the effects of any change following training could be demonstrated. A second key question is, can we empathise with everyone? Is it easier to empathise with someone whose situation or experience we are familiar with? If so, what would that mean (for example), for a 20-year-old physically fit and active female student physiotherapist working with a 40-year-old man who has just lost a leg in a motor cycling accident, and who can no longer play the competitive golf that he so loves? Clearly, we cannot have experienced every situation that our patients will present us with, nor do we often share their unique package of background, culture, age, and gender.

The critical factors, here, are first that empathy is about the other person’s experience rather than how we might feel in the same situation, but second, that empathy is directed more towards the emotion underpinning an experience than towards the experience itself. Because we are all human and have experienced the full range of human emotions in our own lives, we can sense what it might be like for the other person. So, for example, the physiotherapy student above might draw upon her own experiences of having lost something precious to her (a broken relationship, or a family bereavement, for example) in tapping into the sadness and anger that her patient might be experiencing. In Chapter 6 we consider emotional care in more detail.

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