Why We Don't Show Sympathy

Sympathy is never a good option for any health care professional. It is like forbidden fruit, once tasted you will never be able to let it go with the client you are caring for. Eventually you'll become attached, later you'll begin to devote unnecessary resources to their care, compromise your own judgement, and you'll start giving the client false reassurance. All of this so that you can dig yourself a hole of depression.

The habit needs to start early, never letting empathy blossom into sympathy, because it is dangerous. 

An unfortunate example of this is that during a call for UWERT (University of Windsors Emergency Response Team) there was a client who unfortunately was coughing up blood. This client was helped by several members of the team and one of the members even gave him false reassurance, the infamous "everything is going to be alright" line was used. This client died in hospital. The member that said it now has PTSD for becoming sympathetic to a client who is now deceased.

This is why sympathy should never be used, as nurses, as health care providers in general we only can have empathy.