Abstract

It is important to develop emotion regulation skills among healthcare professionals to empower them to provide compassionate healthcare services. Experiencing empathy is central to compassion; however, excessive sensitivity to patients´ complaints, combined with insufficient emotion regulation, may lead to emotional exhaustion among healthcare professionals. As a result, prosocial behaviour may be replaced by avoidance behaviour. Effective emotion regulation strategies enable individuals to manage negative emotions during the empathic process, thereby enhancing both compassionate behaviour and overall wellbeing. An evidence-based method for developing emotion regulation is the practice of compassion meditation, which should be introduced to healthcare professionals and healthcare students. However, using the imprecise concept of compassion fatigue may reduce healthcare workers’ motivation to behave compassionately and thereby increase emotional exhaustion.