Teaching empathy and other compassion-based communication skills.

Empathy plays an important role in comprehensive nursing care. Empathy outcome research shows that exposure to an empathetic person has a palliative and even healing effect on patients. Teaching nurses how to communicate with empathy is crucial to unleash the true potential that empathy has to transform and heal. Four active listening skills and six compassion-based skills are defined. A suggested training rubric appropriate for use in multiple training contexts is provided.