ArticleNursing philosophy : an international journal for healthcare professionals2020
Towards a relational conceptualization of empathy.
Article in Nursing philosophy : an international journal for healthcare professionals, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 64 citations in OpenAlex.
- A randomised controlled trial of a lived experience and education-based weight bias intervention for Australian healthcare students.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2026Trial
- Empathy as Therapeutic Infrastructure in Wound Care: A Conceptual Synthesis.International wound journal · 2026Review
- Integrating narrative medicine into laboratory quality improvement: a sustainable model for reducing coagulation specimen rejections.Implementation science communications · 2026Article
- The role of psychological flexibility in the relationship between empathy and flourishing among clinical nurses: a cross-sectional mediation analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Relational trust in outreach with women experiencing street-involvement in British Columbia, Canada: a qualitative study.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Empathy levels among health sciences professors in Latin America: distribution, classification and gender differences.BMC medical education · 2025Article
- The moderating effect of working years on nurses' medical narrative ability and empathy ability: a cross-sectional survey study.BMC nursing · 2025Article
- The use of home care as relational work: outlines for a research programme.International journal of qualitative studies on health and well-being · 2024Article
- Latent profile analysis of empathy ability and its relationship with professional quality of life among hospice nurses in China.BMC nursing · 2024Article
- [Assistive technologies for elderly patients with dementia: perspectives from the bioethics of health care.]Salud colectiva · 2023Article
- A qualitative exploration of "empathic labor" in Chinese hospice nurses.BMC palliative care · 2022Article
- Development of the Clinical Interpersonal Reactivity Index to evaluate nurses' empathy.Nursing & health sciences · 2021Article
- Attuning to the needs of structural socially isolated older adults with complex problems: the experiences of social workers with personal guidance trajectories for a less-researched group.Health & social care in the community · 2021Article
- Creating an ethical culture to support recovery from substance use disorders.Journal of medical ethics · 2020Article
- Towards a relational conceptualization of empathy.Nursing philosophy : an international journal for healthcare professionals · 2020Article
- Empathic behavior in nursing and medicine students.Revista CuidarteArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Empathy is a fundamental concept in health care and nursing. In academic literature, it has been primarily defined as a personal ability, act or experience. The relational dimensions of empathy have received far less attention. In our view, individualistic conceptualizations are restricted and do not adequately reflect the practice of empathy in daily care. We argue that a relational conceptualization of empathy contributes to a more realistic, nuanced and deeper understanding of the functions and limitations of empathy in professional care practices. In this article, we explore the relational aspects of empathy, drawing on sources that offer a relational approach, such as the field of care ethics, the phenomenology of Edith Stein and qualitative research into interpersonal and interactive empathy. We analyse the relational aspects of three prevalent components of empathy definitions: the underlying ability or act (i.e. the cognitive, affective and perception abilities that enable empathy); the resulting experience (i.e. empathic understanding and affective responsivity) and the expression of this experience (i.e. empathic expression). Ultimately, we propose four inter-related understandings of empathy: (a) A co-creative practice based on the abilities and activities of both the empathizer and the empathee; (b) A fundamentally other-oriented experience; (c) A dynamic, interactive process in which empathizer and empathee influence each other's experiences; (d) A quality of relationships.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.