Evidencing best practice for teaching empathy skills to healthcare professionals: literature review

Abstract

Introduction: Research into patients’ perception of empathy has revealed that patients with stomas feel unsupported by healthcare professionals, who can lack an understanding of how it feels to live life with a stoma. A literature review was undertaken to explore what is the evidence for best practice for teaching empathy skills to healthcare professionals and how this can be applied to caring for people with a stoma. Search strategy: Included studies were required to explore teaching empathy or measuring levels of empathy in pre- and post-graduate nurses and in healthcare professionals caring for patients with a stoma. Excluded studies were those involving paediatric and mental health nursing, as these domains of nursing were considered to differ in clinical specialism and any other healthcare professional discipline outside the nursing profession such as doctors or allied healthcare professionals. Results: Given the number of articles reporting that empathy is lacking in stoma care, it is remarkable that so little original research has been carried out in this area, specifically the lack of qualitative research. A variety of interventions were used to assess empathy in pre- and post-graduate nurses, from multiple nations with diverse cultures. Conclusions: Results from the data revealed several themes for the best practice of teaching empathy skills to healthcare professionals, including essential nurse attributes, innate nurse characteristics, nurse experience and the contribution of experiential learning.