A grounded theory of compassionate care among clinical nurses

Background Compassionate care is a core ethical obligation in nursing, yet the processes through which nurses enact and sustain it remain insufficiently theorized. Existing grounded theory models have not examined an East Asian care context in which nursing staff may assume both clinical and daily living care. Research question/aim/objectives How do clinical nurses experience, construct, and sustain compassionate care, and what ethical challenges shape this process? Research design A grounded theory design following Strauss and Corbin was employed. Semi-structured interviews were analysed using open, axial, and selective coding with constant comparison. Ethics of care and moral distress served as sensitizing concepts, while categories were generated inductively. Trustworthiness followed Lincoln and Guba’s criteria. Participants and research context Participants were thirteen female nurses from tertiary and secondary hospitals in South Korea, working across intensive care, hospice and palliative care, general and haematology wards, and emergency settings (mean clinical experience 14.9 years). Interviews were conducted from July 2020 to February 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ethical considerations Institutional Review Board approval was obtained, and all participants provided written informed consent. Findings/results The core category—comprehensive care grounded in an understanding of the illness trajectory—described compassionate nursing as a practice in which anticipating where a patient stands in the illness course shaped responses to present and emerging needs. Workload and time pressure constrained compassionate engagement, while collegial support helped nurses sustain it. Professional fulfilment and emotional depletion appeared as consequences that could influence subsequent care. Conclusions Compassionate care was shaped by the integration of clinical understanding, relational engagement, and organizational conditions. Sustaining this practice may require workload governance and structured collegial support rather than reliance on individual resilience alone.