Current Status and Influencing Factors of Chinese Nurses' Compassion Competence: A Cross‐Sectional Study

What is already known about this topic? Compassion competence constitutes the fundamental basis for fostering therapeutic relationships with patients and exerts a profound influence on the quality of nursing services. Despite extensive research conducted on compassion competence in other countries, the exploration of this topic within the Chinese context remains relatively limited. What this paper adds? This study clarified nuanced distinctions between compassion and empathy within the framework of nursing practice. Factors identified to significantly influence compassion competence include years of work experience, monthly income, departmental assignment, engagement in nurse-patient communication training, individual personality traits and the overall nursing work environment. The Agreeableness, Extraversion, Conscientiousness and Openness dimensions (A, E, C and O) of personality traits, along with the nursing work environment, exhibit statistically significant positive correlations with nurses' compassion competence. The implications of this paper: Study findings offer fresh insights into the formulation of strategies aimed at enhancing nurses' compassion competence. Nursing administrators can tailor training programs to be more personalized, taking into account nurses' individual personality traits and the specific nursing work environment. By doing so, they can not only bolster compassion competence but also mitigate the risk of compassion fatigue, ultimately safeguarding the emotional well-being and fostering the professional sustainability of the nursing workforce.