The Relationship Between Self-Esteem, Empathy Skills And Liking Of Children In Pediatric Nurses And Physicians

Abstract

Objective: There is an important relationship between positive self-esteem, developed empathy skills and liking of children in nurses and physicians. This descriptive study aims to evaluate the relationship between self-esteem, empathy skills and liking of children in pediatric nurses and pediatricians. Method: This descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted with 105 nurses and 46 pediatricians working in private, state and university hospitals. Data were collected using a “Personal Information Form”, the “Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale” (RSES), the “Empathy Skill Scale-B Form” (ESS) and the “Barnett Liking of Children Scale” (BLOCS), and analyzed using SPSS version 22 program via One-way Anova, Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal-Wallis and Pearson’s chi-square tests. Results: In this study, the RSES, BLOCS and ESS mean scores were 32.82±5.18, 85.74±9.08 and 145.79±28.15 for pediatric nurses and 32.41±5.17, 85.28±9.70 and 136.22±22.24 for pediatricians, respectively. Conclusions: There was no direct relationship between self-esteem, empathy skills and liking of children in pediatric nurses and pediatricians (p>0.05), however a statistically significant positive correlation was found between their self-esteem and empathy skills and between their empathy skills and liking of children (p <0.05).