Articles: empathy.
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Nurse education today · Feb 2008
Review'New professionalism'-shifting relationships between nursing education and nursing practice.
New professionalism values egalitarian professional-client partnerships and considers competence integral. Within nursing competence has been accepted as the legitimate indicator of professional practice. ⋯ In this paper I argue that new professionalism is problematic and nursing education faces particular challenges. These include negotiating service-education partnerships which reflect service user involvement and enable the integration of wider notions of competence.
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Previous neuroimaging studies have identified a neural circuit that is involved in empathy for pain. However, the temporal dynamics of neural activities underlying empathic processes remains poorly understood. This was investigated in the current study by recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs) from healthy adults who were presented with pictures or cartoons of hands that were in painful or neutral situations. ⋯ The early and late empathic responses were, respectively, modulated by contextual reality of stimuli and by top-down attention to the pain cues. Moreover, the mean ERP amplitudes at 140-180 ms were correlated with subjective reports of the degree of perceived pain of others and of self-unpleasantness. The ERP results support a model of empathy for pain consisting of early emotional sharing and late cognitive evaluation.
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The aim of this investigation was to enhance the understanding of the concept of caring. ⋯ The findings explicate a cohesive process of caring. They provide insight into the human attributes and clinical milieu that are necessary for caring to emerge. They also offer clarity regarding the therapeutic benefits of caring.
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The delivery of patient-centered care is basic to a large midwestern healthcare institution's mission and highly valued by the department of nursing. Even so, nurses on one medical unit questioned whether caring behaviors were devalued in a technology-oriented environment of providing care. The nursing leadership on the unit responded to the inquiry by conducting a research study. This study explored the state of patient-centered nursing care on a medical unit as perceived by the nursing staff and patients, using Watson's Theory of Human Caring as a framework. ⋯ Both nurses and patients perceived a high level of caring on the unit. The overall theme from the focus group was that "caring begets caring," with 2 subthemes: "relationships of care" and "the context of caring." Caring for each other was identified as essential to keep staff energized and able to work lovingly with patients. Nursing leadership brought the research findings to all staff on the unit for discussion and implementation of structural support for the unit culture of caring.
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J Soc Work End Life Palliat Care · Jan 2008
A study of the relationship between self-care, compassion satisfaction, compassion fatigue, and burnout among hospice professionals.
Hospice care professionals (HCPs) experience a large number of stressors in their work settings. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between self-care, compassion fatigue, burnout, and compassion satisfaction among HCPs. ⋯ Results indicated a relationship between self-care strategies and lower levels of burnout and compassion fatigue, and higher levels of compassion satisfaction. Several suggestions are offered for continued research and practice in the hospice care field.