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🤗 Caring as a Cornerstone of Nursing Education
Caring is often described as the heart of nursing, yet it can feel surprisingly difficult to teach. It feels somewhat "easy" to demonstrate assessment skills, practice dosage calculations, and rehearse emergency scenarios, but how do we teach presence, empathy, and human connection?
Because caring feels personal and intangible, it is sometimes left to chance in clinical experiences. But I believe empathy can be taught, practiced, and strengthened just like any other nursing skill. When we intentionally create structured opportunities for students to step into a patient’s perspective, we move caring from an abstract to a concrete, repeatable practice.
Before we discuss this teaching strategy, I want to say that I strongly believe that modeling these behaviors is an essential first step in teaching caring and empathy. We can start by abandoning the feared nursing instructor persona and showing compassion and kindness to students.
This does not include lowering our standards, allowing for mediocrity or unprofessional behaviors, but I think it is essential to be kind, extend a helping hand, offer assistance, and be approachable.
Next, I think it is important to distinguish between empathy and sympathy. Sympathy is feeling the same emotions as another. We cannot make students "feel" a certain way.
But empathy is seeking to understand how another is feeling. And this is a skill that nurse educators can teach. Just like any skill, it needs to be practiced. In the spirit of active learning, the brain that does the work does the learning. And the creation of an Empathy Map can help students to develop this skill.
📚 How to Implement
An empathy map is a simple visual framework that helps students step into a patient’s experience. It typically asks learners to consider what a patient might be thinking, feeling, saying, and doing in a given situation.
Instead of focusing only on vital signs or diagnoses, the empathy map shifts attention to the human side of care. By organizing these perspectives on paper, students can better understand the emotional, social, and contextual factors influencing a patient’s health. This gives them practice responding to patient needs with deeper compassion.
Instructor preparation
The first step is to decide on a patient persona. I use this exercise when we discuss COPD. Begin by finding a picture of a patient. Then build a bit of a story around the image.
Here is the example that I use:
Instructions to students
In class, draw a simple grid on a whiteboard or use the document camera.
You can also have students complete their own using the worksheet template (access below).
Next, begin filling in the boxes. Below are some prompting questions to help students come up with ideas.
🗣️ SAYS Quadrant
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Think of things this patient may directly say to you when you enter the room or ask how they are.
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This patient may say, "I can't breathe," or "Is my oxygen on?" Think of these as direct quotes that the patient would say.
🧠 THINKS Quadrant
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This quadrant involves getting into the patient's inner voice. What are they saying to themselves but not out loud? What would they be reluctant to share because they are self-conscious, afraid, or being polite?
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This patient may say, "I'm afraid of dying" or "I just want to get out of here."
🏃🏻➡️ DOES Quadrant
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This section asks the student to think of what the patient physically does. What do they do when you leave the room? What do they do once they are discharged?
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This patient may leave and smoke a cigarette. They may cry about their hopeless situation.
💎 FEELS Quadrant
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This quadrant aims to understand how the patient is feeling. What are they worried about? What are they excited about? How do they feel about their hospital experience?
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This patient may be worried about moving to assisted living and not having anyone to care for his dog. They may want to go home more.
🔄 Variations of the Empathy Map
Virtual option
An Empathy Map is easily translated into an online, live, or asynchronous classroom. For asynchronous online classes, you could set this activity as a discussion board (written or video) and have students respond to their peers' ideas.
Clinical option
In clinical settings, you could add this empathy map to clinical paperwork or complete it as part of a post-conference activity.
🤍 Start Creating an Empathy Map for Nursing Education
Any classroom or clinical experience can benefit from discussing empathy and caring behaviors.
Like any skill, empathy and caring can be modeled and taught in nursing education. This activity will take about 15 minutes and seamlessly blend your technical course content with the art of caring.
It gives students the perfect mix of clinical knowledge and compassionate bedside presence.
Just like we do for IV starts and listening to lung sounds, we must allow our students to practice this clinical skill. Using an Empathy Map can be a helpful tool and allow for deeper understanding and reflection of how a patient feels.
🎧 Additional Teaching Tools for Empathy
I had a discussion with Julie Robertson about the importance of teaching empathy on the Learning Lab RNpodcast.
You can listen here:
Or check our her amazing resource, The Game of Loss, to practice empathy when teaching chronic conditions.
Conclusion
Empathy can be intentionally practiced in nursing education. Just like physical assessment or dosage calculation, understanding a patient’s perspective improves with a structured framework and guided reflection.
An empathy map provides a simple, practical framework for teaching caring behaviors. By organizing what a patient says, thinks, does, and feels, students move beyond surface-level interactions and begin to understand at a deeper level what the patient is experiencing.
Modeling compassion sets the tone for practicing empathy. When educators demonstrate empathy in their teaching presence, students are more likely to internalize and replicate those behaviors in clinical practice.
Martha Johnson
Martha Johnson, MSN, RN is a nurse educator and the creator of BreakoutRN. She helps nursing faculty build active learning into the classroom and clinical setting, one practical idea at a time, using tools that support clinical judgment, engagement, and real-world nursing practice.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is empathy really something that can be taught, or is it a personality trait?
Empathy is a skill that can be strengthened. While some students may naturally lean toward compassionate behaviors, structured activities like the empathy map help all learners practice perspective-taking in a consistent and measurable way.
When is the best time to use an empathy map in the curriculum?
Empathy maps can be used in almost any content area. They work especially well when introducing chronic illness, end-of-life care, mental health, or complex medical conditions where understanding the patient experience is essential.
Will this activity take too much class time away from theory content?
Not at all. The empathy map can be completed in about 15 minutes and integrates seamlessly with existing case studies or lectures. It enhances clinical reasoning by connecting technical knowledge to human experience. It is not meant to replace core content.
