Empathy in Patient Care among Undergraduate Nursing Students

Abstract

Introduction: Empathy is a quality that is more cognitive than affective or emotional. It involves the cognitive ability to understand the patient’s perspective, amount of suffering, and ability to communicate this understanding and a desire to assist in the patient’s treatment. Hence, the study was conducted to assess the empathy in patient care among undergraduate nursing students of selected nursing colleges of Pokhara. Methods: A cross-sectional study was undertaken using the paper-based version of the Jefferson Scale of Empathy. A purposive sampling technique was used for selecting colleges. Seventy-nine students participated in the research study. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences was used to generate descriptive statistics, t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests were used to assess differences in empathy mean scores according to Demographic and previous work-related variables. Results: A total of 79 students participated in this study. Overall, respondents reported a good empathy score (i.e. mean±SD 111.076±13.29) as measured by the JSE-HPS The difference in empathy mean scores according to demographic and previous work-related variables i.e. age group (P= 0.373), academic year of study (P= 0.37), relationship status (P= 0.059), religion (P= 0.241), ethnicity (P= 0.486) and years of experience (P= 0.691) were not statistically significant. Conclusion: The undergraduate nursing students’ level of empathy tends to be satisfactory. The study also concludes that none of the demographic and previous work-related variables tends to influence the empathy among undergraduate nursing students.