Introducing nursing practice to student nurses: How can we promote care compassion and empathy

To the population nursing and caring are synonymous. Empathy and using therapeutic relationships are ways that nurses can utilise care and compassion in their practice. However health care delivery needs to be led by evidence and one way to ensure evidence-based care is delivered compassionately and with empathy is to utilise the principles of nursing therapeutics. Nursing therapeutics allows a nurse to understand how care should be delivered as well as why. This discussion paper explores the use of therapeutic relationship building, nursing therapeutics and compassionate nursing and how neophyte student nurses can be introduced into these concepts during their first practice exposure. Using clinical case-studies, role-play and reflective discussion, student nurses explore and re-evaluate assumptions, to apprise and consider their beliefs and their impulse to care. Educational dialogue encourages a connection with the patient, to the person and their humanity. The implementation of this approach is facilitated by the use of newly devised learning resources which have been formulated to frame the encounter and to enable the student to look at their interaction and develop their therapeutic approach.