Compassion Can Be Taught. This

¶ … compassion can be taught. This is a controversial question, as many people believe that compassion is something that is innate to human beings. As a result, those lacking compassion are not seen as capable of change. This leads some to the conclusion that only the naturally empathetic and compassionate are good candidates for the nursing profession. This paper dispels that myth by focusing on the meaning of compassion within the professional context of nursing.

That viewpoint confuses the definition of personal compassion and the type of compassion that nurses must have. As caregivers, nurses need to be able to treat patients with compassion, and the standards for compassionate care can be taught. They may even run contrary to the natural dulling of emotion that one can expect in professional health care workers whose technical knowledge and work experience make them less apprehensive about medical conditions that might frighten patients and their families. Most people agree that compassion is a critical skill for a nurse.

Without the ability to empathize with patients, how patients perceive their quality of care declines, even if the care meets or exceeds the technical requirements for standard care. This is because patients are human beings and they yearn for that emotional connection with their caregivers, which reassures them that they are going to be okay. As a result, compassion is considered, particularly by laypersons, a critical skill for nurses.

However, "One of the difficulties in considering issues such as compassion is that everyone -- patients, nurses and politicians - will have their own personal, subjective definition. Personal definitions fit in with our own view of the world, but may have little in common with the views of others" (Davison & Williams, 2009). The fact that compassion is difficult to define can make it very difficult to assess whether or not compassion can be taught. Some people believe that compassion in an in-born trait and cannot be taught.

Therefore, they might suggest that it is important to only select nursing candidates who show a natural aptitude for compassion. These nurses might be more empathetic than others, respond to patient pain with more genuine concern, and sympathize with family members who have a loved one experiencing an illness. However, there is some problem with only selecting highly empathetic individuals as nursing candidates.

First, too much empathy can be a crippling problem for a health care professional, because health care professionals cannot be crippled by pain and loss in their patients. Nurses have to be able to effectively do their jobs even in the face of overwhelmingly difficult emotional situations. For example, a hospice nurse who experiences debilitating loss and grief at every death would be just as hampered in the performance of her duties as a hospice nurse who was unable to empathize with her patients and their families.

Likewise, it is important to realize that some of the technical aspects of nursing education may actually not encourage compassion in nurses. One of a nurse's critical skills is being able to evaluate the severity of a condition or of a patient's presenting symptoms. Therefore, a well-trained nurse might be very confident that a patient's symptoms do not indicate a serious problem, even if the patient is experiencing stress and fear. This may result in behavior towards the patient that the patient perceives as somehow being callous or lacking compassion.

What this demonstrates is that empathy is impacted by education. Student values can change as the result of both formal coursework and the overall environment of a nursing program (Johnson, 2008). Moreover, many nursing educators will discuss the risk of burnout or fatigue with their students. They may reveal attitudes towards patients that the students perceive as being uncaring.

While this probably does not reflect a lack of concern, but, rather, a coping mechanism for professionals called to exercise compassion and care in their interactions with patients but technical precision in their interactions with other health care professionals, it can still send.