Ethics: beyond patient care: practicing empathy in the workplace.

Citation: Dinkins, C. (May 10, 2011) "Ethics: Beyond Patient Care: Practicing Empathy in the Workplace" OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing Vol. 16 No. 2. DOI: 10.3912/OJIN.Vol16No02EthCol01 One of the basic building blocks of ethics and ethical conduct toward others is empathy. Without empathy it is difficult for any of us to understand the needs and wants of others so that we may know how to treat them kindly and generously, or to practice any other virtue in our day-to-day relations with them. Empathy is a much-discussed and much-debated topic in the nursing literature. Some have questioned whether empathy is the best mode for nurse-patient interactions (Morse et al., 1992); others have struggled with how to define the unique kind of empathy that plays a part in the complex relationships nurses have with patients (Yu & Kirk, 2008). However, less attention has been paid to empathy's role in other (non-direct care) interactions of a nurse's work and life. Michie (2002) has suggested that for people in many work situations, their jobs and lives may become more manageable and less stressful if they can practice empathy both in their professional environment and in their everyday interactions with those around them. Since nurses navigate a complex and varied network of contacts from hospital administrators to physicians and aides, empathy may be especially helpful in their daily interactions. The concept of ?empathy' is relatively young, brought first to the English language in 1909 by psychologist Edward Titchener as a translation of the German ?Einfuhlung' or ?feeling into' (Stueber, 2011). Since that time, the term has been used by philosophers, social scientists, healthcare practitioners, and many others, with each discipline having different meanings and implications for the term. One of the most useful ways to look at empathy for the purpose of the life and work of nurses may be to take empathy not as a feeling or an instinct but as a practice . This column will briefly examine how nurses can cultivate the practice of empathy both in the workplace and elsewhere. In order to understand the practice of empathy, let us first examine the obstacles a practitioner of this art must overcome. The American philosopher William James writes of "a certain blindness in human beings," a blindness "with which we all are afflicted in regard to the feelings of creatures and people different from ourselves" (James, 1899/1984, p. 841). Each of us has our important duties, our deep desires, even our pet peeves, and those around us have their own as well. Others feel theirs so strongly that they cannot see or appreciate ours, regardless of how much we may want them to; and we tend to be unable to understand and appreciate theirs. To illustrate this difficulty as it occurs between human beings, James turns to the more extreme difficulty of empathy between species - humans and their dogs: Take our dogs and ourselves, connected as we are by a tie more intimate than most ties in this world; and yet, outside of that tie of friendly fondness, how insensible, each of us, to all that makes life significant for the other! - we to the rapture of bones under hedges, or smells of trees and lampposts, they to the delights of literature and art. As you sit reading the most moving romance you ever fell upon, what sort of a judge is your fox-terrier of your behavior? With all his good will toward you, the nature of your conduct is absolutely excluded from his comprehension. To sit there like a senseless statue, when you might be taking him to walk and throwing sticks for him to catch! What queer disease is this that comes over you every day, of holding things and staring at them like that for hours together, paralyzed of motion and vacant of all conscious life? (pp. 841-842) When we are trying to empathize with our fellow humans, we may find it easier than trying to empathize with another species, but we still come up against the fact that we can observe others only from their external appearances and signs, such as a smile, a heavy sigh, a haggard appearance, or a new habit of humming happy tunes. …