Abstract
Background. Empathic communication skills are critical to providing high-quality nursing care to holistically understand the patient's perspective. A survey research design was used to address the research questions discussed in this study. Data consisted of responses from nursing students attending accredited programs in the southeastern United Sates using the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy Nursing Student Version R (JSPE-R). Findings. Comparisons of the total scores from JSPE Versions S and R yielded similar means and standard deviations with 115 and 114.57, respectively, and standard deviations of 10 and 10.94, respectively. The results of a one-sample t-test failed to render statistical significance (t = −1.22, P = .224), indicating that the overall attitudes of nursing students and medical students are similar. The 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles and overall instrument reliability were also comparable. Conclusions. This paper supports the emergence of alternative factor analysis structures as applied to nursing students through statistical progression from exploratory factor analysis to confirmatory structures. Implications for practice explore the utility of empathy instruments in nurse education, such as empathy progression through curriculum. As nursing educators, the utility of development of instruments to measure effectiveness of teaching strategies and pedagogy for empathy enhancement in practice is important.
Highlights
The rationale for analysis of the instrument was to study the psychometric aspects of the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy Version R
These results offer minimal support for the three-factor model established with the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (JSPE) Version S, resulting in a statistically significant chi-square of 458.79 (P < .001)
The first research question was, “Is there a statistical difference between the JSPE Version S and the JSPE Nursing Student Version R? These psychometric properties were examined for the JSPE-Version S using a sample of 685 first year students from three groups of medical students and compared with these same properties of the JSPE Nursing Student Version R from the current sample of 598 nursing students
Summary
The rationale for analysis of the instrument was to study the psychometric aspects of the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy Version R. This instrument was designed to measure nursing student attitudes toward empathy in the patient care setting. The utility of development of instruments to measure effectiveness of teaching strategies and pedagogy for empathy enhancement in practice is important. Critical review of existing literature regarding empathy encompasses works of all aspects of the health care profession, such as nursing, medical, pharmacy, and physical therapy. The international relevance of the instrument is important to theory development and to advancement of understanding and measuring the concept of empathy in patient Existing instruments include the Empathy Construct Rating Scale (LaMonica), the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis), the Layton Empathy Test (Layton), and the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy [2].
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