Empathy as anchor: Experiences of informal carers supporting individuals with chronic wounds

To explore how informal caregivers perceive, enact, and sustain empathy while supporting individuals living with chronic wounds. A qualitative descriptive design was employed. Semi-structured interviews with informal carers focused on their experiences and understandings of empathy in wound care. Open-ended questions encouraged carers to reflect on how they provide empathetic support and the challenges they encounter. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Coding was conducted independently by researchers before collaboratively reaching consensus on themes and subthemes to ensure rigour and analytic depth. Eight informal carers (four females and four males) participated in this study. Thematic analysis produced four themes: (1) Empathy as an emotional anchor; (2) The unseen and undervalued labour of caring; (3) Time as a therapeutic resource; and (4) Navigating a fragmented care system. Carers offered valuable insight into empathetic wound care. Despite empathetic care being associated with increased patient satisfaction, particularly in helping patients feel valued and understood, carers in this study reported feeling undervalued and underestimated. They were infrequently included within key discussions concerning the patient, with evidence of active exclusion in hospital and community settings. Barriers to empathetic care included time constraints and workload pressures; and carers requested specific, hands-on training and simple guidance. This study provides novel insight into informal carers’ experience of delivering empathetic wound care. These results can inform the development of targeted support frameworks that enhance caregiver well-being, improve care quality and ultimately optimize healing trajectories in chronic wound care. • Carers described empathy as an emotional and practical anchor that helped them navigate the complexities of wound management; • Carers frequently reported feeling invisible, excluded, or undervalued within clinical encounters; • Empathic encounters increased security and clarity, whereas rushed or impersonal interactions heightened anxiety and left carers feeling unsupported; • Many participants in this study expressed a desire for structured, hands-on training.