In this new millennium, scientific advances have generated innovative technologies in regards to

patient care, allowing diagnoses and establishing effective treatments. Empathy is the scheme of
the great healers; without empathy there is no compassion, without compassion there is no bond,
and without bond there is no healing. Even though empathy sometimes becomes a painful and
intolerable reality, for the nurses is essential; encouraging empathy will offer a more effective
and passive patient-nurse relation, yet it remains difficult to define and measure; nurses may not
differentiate it with sympathy and that confusion increased nursing distress. For years the
information shared by nursing professionals as to the reality and humanism has been
misunderstood. The communication difficulties, soreness and confusion should be more
centralized in the professional teaching of nursing. It is not fair that thousands of nurses are
trained and focused on good technological skills, with ability to see the challenges confronted by
the human body: the psychological, emotional, societal, cultural and family stay in the
background. The discomforts that nursing professionals deal with their patients with the lack in
the relational domain. Identifying the possible effects cause by these two very different feelings
in the life of a nurse and researching the history on sympathy and the multifaceted aspects of
empathy is endless. Empathy or sympathy? How to distinguish them apart? No doubt these are
two conditions that often lend themselves to confusion, mostly in the medical field. Empathy is a
feeling with people, is a vulnerable choice, otherwise sympathy is a distant connection,
intellectual, predictable; a way of understanding without crossing personal boundaries. The
nursing profession is exhausting, one of the most common things is to face uncomfortable
situations; trying to improve the realities with the knowledge that is difficult to improve them
with just one solution or a conversation. Acquiring the skills and strategies and then
differentiating the feeling between sympathy and empathy is indispensable for this profession.