Influencing Factors and Outcomes of Compassionate Nursing Care

Compassionate nursing care, as a manifestation of human connection and caring, enables nurses to get to know their patients and provide meaning and direction to their decisions and actions, as demonstrated by attitudes and behaviours. Despite this, a lack of compassion is identified as the primary cause of poor healthcare quality worldwide. This is because most healthcare organisations around the world disregard compassion, and there is a lack of understanding about factors that could aid and inhibit nurses from providing compassionate nursing care in today's healthcare contexts. Using a narrative literature review, this paper seeks to provide an overview of the topic of compassion in healthcare to identify the influencing factors and outcomes of compassionate care as understood and examined by diverse groups of researchers.