Empathy In Nursing Essay

Hello Dr. M. and classmates,

Among the other important responsibilities, a nurse’s job is simply to care for others. When people think about nurses, they probably visualize a caring human being, holding a patient’s hand at the bedside. Caring is one of the centralized themes of nursing (Adams, 2016). Within nursing, it is defined as having empathy and being compassionate for patients. Empathy is understanding what the patient is experiencing, reflecting on how one might feel in that situation. According to Digby, Williams, and Lee (2016), nurses need to express empathy to fully provide care for their patients. Having compassion while caring for others takes empathy one step further. Once the nurse understands and knows what the patient

The care environment, a part of patient-centred care, creates the support that nurses need to prevent possibly leaving the field forever. It also needs to be evident from all levels of nursing staff: floor nurses to upper level management (McCormack et el, 2015). Furthermore, according to Brett, Branstetter, and Wagner (2014), mentor programs and promoting a work-life balance can create a caring environment. In my facility, we have a mentor program for all the newly hired nurses. Each educator is a mentor for nurses from different units and seeks to meet with nurses at their 30-60 days, 6 months, and 1 year of service. During these one-on-one interactions, the nurses are asked a group of questions including how they are feeling within the organization, what tools they used during nurse-physician communication, and how orientation prepared them. I believe that there are some limitations, such as the nurses not responding to emails to meet or that the same questions are asked at each meeting. However, I have had nurses state that they felt it was a valuable program, and they felt further supported in their professional development within our