Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Compassion has historically been defined as an underpinning principle of work conducted by health professionals, especially nurses.1 Numerous definitions of compassionate care exist, incorporating a range of elements. Most include a cognitive element: understanding what is important to the other by exploring their perspective; a volitional element: choosing to act to try and alleviate the other’s disquiet; an affective element: actively imagining what the other is going through; an altruistic element: reacting to the other’s needs selflessly; and a moral element: to not show compassion may compound any pain or distress already being experienced by the other.
Bivins et al. (Thu,) studied this question.