Articles: empathy.
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Five care providers particularly successful at communicating with patients with communication difficulties were video-recorded together with three patients with aphasia after stroke, during morning care activities. The care providers were then interviewed immediately after the video-recordings, about their experiences of communicating with such patients. The interviews with the care providers were interpreted by means of a phenomenological hermeneutic method. ⋯ A relaxed and supportive atmosphere facilitates reciprocity between care provider and patient. The communication is not technical or strategic; instead care providers share the patients' experiences in a silent dialogue. This silent dialogue involves sharing the patients' feelings and thus receiving messages from the patient.
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Res Theory Nurs Pract · Jan 2003
Caring in nursing practice: the development of a conceptual framework.
This article reports the results of a qualitative research study which explored patients' experience of caring. To elicit stories relating to the experience of caring, a hermeneutic approach was selected incorporating a narrative method. One-to-one interviews were conducted with 24 patients in their homes, shortly after discharge from hospital. ⋯ Data from narrative analysis suggest a positive linear relationship between the structures required for the process that lead to patient outcomes. When compared to current theoretical literature, the findings support elements of existing theories. These include the importance of the nurse attributes for professional caring (structure), the activities of caring, which can be viewed as nurse interventions and the dual nature of caring, which encompasses attitudes and actions (process).
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Psychotherapists who work with the chronic illness tend to disregard their own self-care needs when focusing on the needs of clients. The article discusses the concept of compassion fatigue, a form of caregiver burnout among psychotherapists and contrasts it with simple burnout and countertransference. ⋯ The model also suggests that, to limit compassion stress, psychotherapists with chronic illness need to development methods for both enhancing satisfaction and learning to separate from the work emotionally and physically in order to feel renewed. A case study illustrates how to help someone with compassion fatigue.