A defense of empathy: Edith Stein, nursing, and prisoner/patients

Many nurses fear empathizing too much with patients. They worry that empathy requires letting their guard down, which, when caring for a potentially violent patient, will make them vulnerable to the risk of assault. They worry that as empathy leads the nurse to reckon with who the other is, it will draw out prejudices the nurse might have toward some categories of persons. And nurses worry that empathy will cause them to experience and be burdened too much by the patient’s suffering. These fears are perhaps most distilled in nurses’ relationships with prisoner/patients, and situating our analysis within such relationships, this paper asks how philosopher Edith Stein’s accounts of empathy and community address nurses’ fears when caring for patients who may pose danger to them. We argue first that empathy for the prisoner/patient permits nurses to anticipate the patient’s future actions, including violent ones. Second, what Stein calls reiterated empathy allows nurses to discern prisoner/patients’ appraisal of the nurse’s care and to self-correct, as needed, any stigmatizing care. Finally, though the suffering of patients is indeed too much for the nurse to bear alone, following Stein we suggest that through relationships of solidarity the nurse may meaningfully bear that suffering in community, and the community may meaningfully bear that suffering in the nurse. In Edith Stein, who, in addition to studying philosophy, had worked briefly as a nurse, we find resources to address nurses’ misconceptions and fears of empathy and to enliven nurses’ care.

Duke Scholars

Author Farr A Curlin Medicine, Geriatrics and Palliative Care