Dr Carmel Bond Ph.D., MSc-NursSci, MSc-Psych, RNMH, PGCE QTS, SFHEA, is a Senior Lecturer in Mental Health Nursing at Sheffield Hallam University and a Visiting Research Fellow at Nottingham Trent University. A registered mental health nurse, she has worked across palliative care, forensic mental health, and older-adult inpatient services, and brings over 20 years of teaching experience to her work. Carmel’s research and teaching focus on compassionate, person-centred care, challenging systemic injustice in healthcare, and developing reflective practitioners who can advocate for patients and drive change in mental health services.

Her upcoming book "Compassionate Nursing Practice: A Guide for Students" is due for release January 2027!

Where It Began: Curiosity, Loss and a Calling to Care

For Carmel, nursing was never just a career choice, it was something that took root early, shaped by loss, curiosity and a need to understand what it means to be human. Reflecting on her journey, she describes it simply as “a career calling,” one grounded in questions she had been asking since childhood about life, death and the body.

But what began as a fascination with biology quickly evolved into something deeper. As she grew older, she realised that “there was much more to being human than just our biology,” and that relationships, particularly early ones, play a defining role in shaping who we are. That shift is what ultimately drew her towards mental health: a field where, as she puts it, “we can’t separate the two things... everything interacts together.”

Today, her work spans clinical practice, education and research, but one philosophy runs through it all; care must extend beyond symptoms to the full context of a person’s life. For Carmel, it has always been about “not just... the biology, but the whole person in the context of their whole life.”

That perspective shapes how she understands her role as a nurse. Being present in someone’s life, especially at their most vulnerable, is not something she takes lightly.

“Every person that I’ve cared for,” she reflects, “it’s a real privilege to be a part of that person’s life... to be with them through that illness journey.”

Compassionate care: more than kindness

Carmel describes compassionate care as not an abstract ideal but rather something that must be actively practised. It begins with truly seeing the person in front of you, not just their symptoms.

“You can’t care properly unless you really, really get to know that person,” she explains, emphasising that care without understanding is incomplete. In her view, compassion means recognising someone within the full context of their life, not reducing them to a diagnosis.

However, this kind of care doesn’t happen automatically. “Even just simple communication skills... take practice,” she says, challenging the assumption that listening is instinctive. Instead, it is something that must be learned, refined and continually reflected on.

At the centre of compassionate care is validation. “Everyone’s experience is valid for them,” Carmel says, stressing that patients need to feel “listened to and understood” rather than questioned or dismissed. Often, it is the smallest responses that matter most such as acknowledging someone’s pain rather than minimising it.

Because when patients do open up, what they offer is not insignificant. “A person’s story, their lived experience is really precious,” she says.

“If someone feels that they can trust you enough to tell you about their experience, it’s a real honour... it’s like a gift.”

Compassionate care, then, is about what you do with that gift.

Spectrum of Empathy Model (Bond, 2025)

A system shaped by history

However, listening and believing patients doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Carmel is clear that modern healthcare is still shaped by its past, particularly when it comes to gender.

“History shapes everything,”

she says. “It shapes how we think, how we respond to people, and how we diagnose people.” In mental health especially, she points to enduring legacies such as hysteria, describing it as “very impactful” in the way women’s emotions and symptoms continue to be interpreted.

This historical bias is not just cultural, it is structural. Women, she notes, were “historically... excluded from research and clinical trials,” meaning that much of the evidence base underpinning modern medicine has been built without them. Even diagnostic frameworks reflect this imbalance, having been shaped by research populations and decision-makers that were overwhelmingly male.

The result is a system where bias is often invisible yet deeply embedded, influencing everything from diagnosis to treatment pathways.

When language becomes harm

Carmel tells us how one of the most powerful, and overlooked, drivers of inequality in healthcare is language.

“Language is really important,” she explains, because it shapes not only how patients are perceived, but how they perceive themselves. Cultural narratives, media representations and even everyday phrases become part of a wider discourse that is “taken on board... [and] processed unconsciously,” ultimately influencing how clinicians respond to patients.

This becomes particularly dangerous when it leads to the minimisation of pain.

She recalls how often patients’ experiences are subtly dismissed through seemingly benign phrases. Saying “at least...” in response to suffering, for example, can invalidate the reality of what someone is going through. As she puts it, it’s like telling someone who has lost a limb, “well at least you’ve got another leg”, technically true, but entirely dismissive of their loss.

These moments matter. They shape trust, reinforce stigma and can leave patients feeling unheard or disbelieved.

Communication methods used to develop rapport with patients (Bond, 2025)

The persistence of dismissed pain

Despite growing awareness around medical misogyny, women’s pain continues to be minimised, something Carmel sees as the result of multiple overlapping pressures.

“There are probably a few things that interact,” she explains. Unconscious bias plays a role, but so do systemic issues: “workforce stress... time pressures... massive workloads.” In overstretched systems, clinicians may not have the time or capacity to reflect on their own assumptions, leading to default patterns of thinking that go unchallenged.

Under these conditions, care can become transactional. Patients are moved through systems quickly, and nuanced experiences risk being reduced to simplified explanations. “That’s when things get missed,” Carmel says, describing how pressures to meet targets and reduce waiting lists can lead to dismissal, “it’s just this, well off you go.”

Rethinking pain and validation

Carmel also tells us how the issue isn’t just how pain is treated but it’s how it’s understood. “Pain is very subjective,” she explains, challenging the idea that it can be neatly captured through standardised scales or quick assessments.

What matters more, she suggests, is how clinicians respond in the moment. Rather than dismiss or override what someone is telling us, particularly when their experience doesn’t fit expected patterns, care should begin from a place of acceptance: “everyone’s experience is valid for them.”

That shift requires a different kind of communication, one grounded in acknowledgement rather than doubt. Even when there isn’t a clear answer, there is still something clinicians can offer.

“If you listen,” she says, even simple responses like recognising that something “must be really difficult” can begin to build trust.

Because when pain is questioned or minimised, the impact goes beyond the physical. It shapes how patients see themselves, and whether they feel able to seek help again. Validation, in that sense, is not an add-on to care, it is where care begins.

Changing the system from within

So what needs to change?

For Carmel, the answer is both systemic and cultural. Diagnostic assumptions must be challenged, leadership must become more compassionate, and healthcare professionals need better training in recognising their own biases.

“Turning the camera back on ourselves,” as she puts it, is essential, asking not just what we think, but why we think it.

Reflection, she argues, is one of the most powerful tools available: a way of interrupting ingrained patterns and opening up space for more equitable care.

Education plays a critical role here. By teaching future practitioners how language shapes care, and how bias operates in practice, there is an opportunity to shift the culture from the ground up.

Making space for lived experience

Another key change lies in how we define evidence.

Currently, Carmel believes the system is “weighted towards objective data,” often at the expense of patient narratives. However, this is beginning to shift, with growing recognition of the importance of lived experience in research and practice.

“There is a big push... to have more people with lived experience,” she notes, highlighting the importance of co-production: where patients are not just subjects of research, but active contributors to it.

Because overall, excluding people in the name of protection can do more harm than good. “If you don’t give them a choice,” she says, “then they’re never going to have it.”

The simplest (and hardest) shift

Across everything Carmel shares, one message remains constant: meaningful care starts with compassion.

It starts with listening, even when there isn’t an immediate answer. With acknowledging difficulty, rather than diminishing it. With recognising that expertise does not sit solely within medical institutions, but also within the lived experiences of patients themselves.

In a system shaped by history, pressure and bias, these shifts may seem small. But as Carmel’s work shows, they have the power to transform care at its most fundamental level.

Because sometimes, the most important thing a healthcare professional can say is also the simplest: I hear you.

Thank you so much to Carmel for sharing your work and incredible insight!

Where to find Carmel:

• Research Gate
• Sheffield Hallam University

References:

• Bond C. Skills for communicating effectively with people who have mental health issues. Nurs Stand. 2025 Feb 5;40(2):69-74. doi: 10.7748/ns.2024.e12444. Epub 2024 Nov 21. PMID: 39568310.
• Cobbaert, L., E.Maloney, K.Harding, and S.James. 2026. “Dismantling the Diagnostic Construct of Borderline Personality Disorder: A Critical Discourse Analysis.” International Journal of Mental Health Nursing35, no. 2: e70241. https://doi.org/10.1111/inm.70241.