Have you ever stood in a room full of people and felt completely alone? Most people will associate with being alone but not when  people are around us and that is why it feels so strange. Surely you should not feel alone if you have your friends and family or even strangers around you? The meaning of the the word alone is being one, solitary or on one’s own. Whereas loneliness is an emotional response to feeling alone. It is an intense feeling of sadness not happiness and can lead to or exacerbate mental and physical illness and even suicidal thoughts.  Loneliness is a killer and some studies on older people and people from different cultures have proven this to be the case.  See summary here 

In a UK government  survey by Pyle and Evans ( 2018)  it was found that the widowed, women, those in poor health or with long term conditions and younger adults were all most likely to feel  lonely and be the most lonely.  Most importantly the main characteristic of not feeling lonely was a sense of belonging, through family, friends, work or education.

In nursing we work with some very vulnerable groups of individuals but many are either in poor health or poor financially. They might also be homeless (roofless)  in abusive relationships or  have complex needs that together are very difficult to manage. These are all indications of loneliness that we can quickly assess when we meet them.

Compassionless care would take no notice of these indicators of loneliness as it would only focus upon the work that needs to be done with the person e.g. review medication, symptoms, wounds or thoughts. How many times do we hear – it is not my job to fix their relationships, housing or finances?   If we are compassionless in this way we are probably contributing to the loneliness which will prevent or delay healing and could possibly make things worse.

In all helping relationships there should be a focus on being therapeutic  (otherwise why are we there?) but many things can prevent us building the therapeutic relationship if we do not show compassion.  Therapeutic compassion would demonstrate empathy –  asking how someone is feeling, sympathy – asking what they need  and recovery – how can you help them to do this. If we were all more compassionate in our approach to care then we can be more confident that people will feel less lonely and more as if they belong to be in your care.

Note – During the current Covid19 pandemic many  nurses are trying to demonstrate compassion by getting to know people in intensive care  using Get to Know me Boards .  This can also create a sense of compassion for families and colleagues when protective clothing creates a barrier to building the therapeutic relationship.  This is  a simple way to promote and demonstrate compassion in nursing  and has been used in Dementia care for many years.  We are all very grateful for these nurses and the wonderful compassionate job that they are doing right now.