| The Judeo-Christian heritage of the Good Samaritan or the legacy of the compassionate stranger has often been cited as a significant factor in the development of nursing and medicine as moral traditions in the United States and other western countries. Increasingly, however, patients, families, and healthcare professionals themselves describe experiences with healthcare professionals and situations that demonstrate a lack of compassion.;Although compassion is frequently found in the literature, the researcher found no clear conceptualization of the term. Using Schwartz-Barcott and Kim's (2000) Hybrid Model of Concept Development (HMCD) as a guide, an analysis of the concept of compassion from a review of the theological, psychological, medical, and nursing literature was combined with interviews with nurses and older adult patients to more clearly articulate the concept from theoretical and empirical perspectives. The findings of the literature review, the nurse interviews, and the patient interviews were then compared and contrasted in order to better understand compassion as it is experienced within the relationship between nurses practicing in and older adult patients receiving care in acute care settings.;In addition to identifying nursing behaviors and patient care activities that more clearly explicated the meaning compassion within the context of the nurse-patient relationship the findings indicated that both nurses and older adult patients consider compassion an essential element in good nursing care. The definition of compassion that emerged from the patient interviews indicated that compassion is an innate quality or trait that enables a nurse to discern the need, discomfort, or suffering of a patient without always being told or asked and provides a level of care for him/her that surpasses basic requirements in such a way that the patient feels cared for, valuable, and safe. |
