Integrating compassion to clinical care: a review of an emerging ‘science’

Sympathy, empathy and compassion are a family of connected mental states or emotions that relate to understanding and responding to another’s feelings. Compassion can be defined as a feeling that arises when witnessing another’s suffering, and motivates a desire to help. It differs from empathy, which is experiencing another’s feelings, and sympathy (a feeling of sorrow and concern to another’s pain or suffering). There is a public demand for health workers to demonstrate more compassion. This is reflected in compassion being stressed in mission statements of health institutions, and in the goals of regulatory organizations and medical councils. Increasingly, compassion and technical competence are both considered as integral elements of quality care. Despite their acknowledged importance in health care, empathy and compassion are rarely researched or taught explicitly.