Clinical empathy with cancer patients: a content analysis of oncology nurses' perception

Background: Empathy is one of the most important communication skills in clinical practice, specifically in the field of oncology. Empathic competences have a significant meaning for caring and therapeutic relations in nurses' responsibilities. Clinical empathy brings positive performance, thus patients' emotions are perceived and expressed more easily. Clinical empathy is contextual, interpersonal and affective, but it is also difficult to study. Awareness of oncology nurses' perception of this phenomenon might help them to plan for more effective patient-centered consultations within interventional programs. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore the content of clinical empathy with cancer patients from the perspective of oncology nurses.

Patients and methods: In this qualitative study, 15 oncology nurses were selected by purposive sampling. A semi-structured face-to-face interview was conducted with each of the participants. After data collection, all interviews were transcribed and reviewed, and then primary codes, sub-categories and categories were extracted. The data were analyzed with the conventional content analysis method by MAXQDA 10 software.

Results: Clinical empathy showed a composite construct with five main categories, including co-presence (physical and emotional presence), metacognition (self-awareness of mental processes), perception (knowing about awareness of individuals), inherent (genetic) and didactic (instructive) nature.

Conclusion: Clinical empathy as an effective strategy can be taught through three areas of "co-presence", "metacognition" and "perception" in the context of cancer care. Thus, clinical empathy should be considered as one of the competency standards which can be taught to oncology nurses.