ABSTRACT
This chapter explains where today's emphasis on compassion in nursing came from, and discusses the uses and abuses of the idea and whether compassion could be a red herring in nursing work. It draws on a recent reframing of so-called compassion failure as a psychological phenomenon associated with highly pressured contexts. The chapter discusses alternatives to compassion – these concern a combination of carefully listening to patients and high levels of professional knowledge. Modern nursing was produced in the peculiar culture of nineteenth-century Britain where respectable women did not go out to work, the country's universities only admitted men and only men could vote. As the twentieth century arrived and the basis for nursing work became more technical than moral and with the influence of the feminism of the mid-century, nursing's subordinate relationship to medicine became uncomfortable. Research into socialization of nursing students gives a clear message about the disorientation experienced by students and the dissonance that results for them.
