What is it about?
Nursing professionals are expected to remain understanding and emotionally available to patients while working under demanding conditions. This study explored whether empathy was related to burnout among 115 nurses and nursing assistants working in a Greek general hospital. Participants completed questionnaires measuring both empathy and different aspects of burnout. Higher healthcare-related empathy was associated with less emotional exhaustion, less emotional distancing from patients, lower patient-related burnout, and a stronger sense of professional achievement. More than half of the participants nevertheless showed high levels of emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, or reduced personal accomplishment. These findings show an association, but they cannot establish whether empathy protects professionals from burnout, whether burnout gradually reduces their capacity for empathy, or whether both processes occur together.
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Why is it important?
Burnout affects not only healthcare professionals’ wellbeing but also their ability to remain emotionally present and provide person-centred care. Our findings suggest that empathy should not be viewed simply as a personal virtue. It is also a professional and relational capacity that may be connected to how nursing professionals experience their work and their relationships with patients. Healthcare-specific empathy showed a more consistent relationship with burnout than general empathy, particularly for emotional distancing and patient-related exhaustion. This distinction is important because it suggests that the kind of empathy used in clinical relationships may matter more than a general tendency to understand other people. The findings support further investigation of training, clinical supervision, reflective groups, and peer support. However, these measures should complement—not replace—organisational action on staffing, workload, working conditions, and employee wellbeing.
Perspectives
As the lead author and supervisor of the research on which this article was based, I wanted to examine empathy without idealising it or treating burnout as an individual weakness. Nursing professionals are asked to remain compassionate and emotionally available while working within systems that may leave them exhausted and insufficiently supported. What I find especially important is that empathy appeared to be most closely related to the relational dimensions of burnout: emotional distancing from patients and exhaustion arising from patient care. This suggests that burnout can affect the human relationship at the heart of nursing practice. I hope this study encourages hospitals to create working environments in which empathic care is psychologically sustainable. Supporting empathy requires more than asking professionals to care more; it also requires adequate staffing, manageable workloads, reflective spaces, supervision, and meaningful organisational support.
Dr Chrysovalantis Papathanasiou
Panteion Panepistemio Koinonikon kai Politikon Epistemon
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This page is a summary of: Is empathy associated with lower burnout among nursing professionals? Evidence from a Greek general hospital, Applied Psychology Research, August 2026, Academic Publishing Pte. Ltd.,
DOI: 10.59400/apr4459.
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