Effects of compassion competence on missed nursing care, professional quality of life and quality of life among Korean nurses

Aim: To examine the associations between compassion competence and missed nursing care, professional quality of life and quality of life among clinical nurses.

Background: Compassionate care has been demonstrated to have a positive impact on outcomes for patients, employees and organisations. However, little is known about the associations between compassion competence and missed nursing care, professional quality of life and quality of life among clinical nurses.

Methods: A survey was conducted with 1,556 Korean clinical nurses. The associations between compassion competence and missed nursing care, professional quality of life and quality of life were examined using multivariate linear regression.

Results: Compassion competence was negatively associated with missed nursing care and burnout but positively associated with compassion satisfaction, secondary traumatic stress and quality of life.

Conclusions: Our results extend the literature on the significant influence of compassionate care by providing evidence of its positive effects on missed nursing care, compassion satisfaction, burnout and quality of life in clinical nurses.

Implications for nursing management: Nursing managers should implement programmes to improve compassion competence in clinical nurses to address missed nursing care and burnout and improve compassion satisfaction and quality of life, thus improving quality of care, patient experience and patient safety.