ABSTRACT
Empathy is an everyday phenomenon and a basic moral capacity, and it is also the most central professional skill and ethical guiding tool of nursing care. To be empathic as a nurse means to be able to feel and see things from the point of view of the patient and act in accordance with this knowledge when caring for his/her good and attempting to relieve his/her suffering. Nurses need to be dedicated but still humble when it comes to empathy: to endeavour the step into the perspective of the patient does not mean that this is possible in any total or infallible sense; only the patient feels and knows what it is like to experience this particular suffering as this particular person at this particular time. If or when empathy is complemented by a dialogue with the patient, it becomes possible to reach a more complete and confirmed understanding of his/her predicament. The chapter offers a phenomenological theory of empathy in nursing, inspired by Edith Stein, which brings out the emotional aspects of the phenomenon in concordance with its cognitive features.
