Empathy

Empathy is the ability to experience and understand other people's feelings. We read the moods and emotions of the people we interact with. This is a foundation for good interaction between us humans. This ability to empathize often occurs with a certain delay, unlike pain. It may take a while before we fully understand the significance of an event for a fellow human being.

Some people use empathy and compassion as if they were the same thing, but there is a difference. Research shows that we feel empathy for those we like but not always with strangers or those we dislike. Here, feelings of schadenfreude may even occur. Those of us who work in healthcare must overcome this. Our personal feelings towards another person must not be reflected in our treatment.

Being able to meet and listen to the resident regardless of the situation increases the chances of understanding the resident and their needs. In the professional role, we need to have a balance between closeness and distance. We need to be able to reflect based on ethics, values, and the humanistic view of mankind while creating a good treatment and a good cooperation. There is research suggesting that empathy can wear on mental wellbeing and lead to burnout when we get drawn into the sufferer's emotional state and feel very bad about it.

Compassion

There is also a refined kind of empathy that many who work in healthcare have acquired. It is a compassion that does not contain any pity, only care that is close to what parents feel for their children. For those who have learned to feel compassion, brain areas associated with positive emotions are activated. Compassionate people usually describe their feelings for the other as warmth and care, the opposite of schadenfreude.

Many believe that it is impossible to empathize and understand another person without caring. Feeling, understanding, and care are therefore central in empathy and compassion. To be able to support, we need to feel with but not be overwhelmed by the other's situation and vulnerability. In this way, empathy or compassion as an attitude is an emotional balancing act. Empathy and compassion make us act unselfishly.

It is also possible to see that empathy has different phases. Our ability to feel empathy, the actual feeling with the other, and our actions based on the experience. With this way of looking at it, it is about our imagination, i.e., the ability to put ourselves in the other's situation and the care we show for the other.

Reflection Questions - Compassion and Empathy
Care Staff:
- Do you ever talk about empathy or compassion at work?
- Do you have colleagues who you feel lack empathy or are overly empathetic?

Manager, Nurse, Occupational Therapist, and Physiotherapist:
- Do situations arise where employees are torn by the residents' suffering?
- How do you handle it?
- Can you learn to transform empathy into compassion?

Residents and Relatives:
- Do you feel that the staff at the residence are empathetic?

Erland Olsson
Specialist nurse
Sofrosyne - Better care every day