A study on perception of empathy and difficulty in attitude of empathy for the patient by the new graduate nurses

Abstract

This study aimed to describe how new graduate nurses perceive empathy for patients, how empathically they act, and experience of difficulty about it. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 248 second-year clinical nurses in A Prefecture. The response rate was 30.6% (N=76). The main results were as follows, a) Empathy had a cognitive and an emotional dimension, and was categorized into three types: high cognitive and high emotional type, high cognitive but low emotional type, and low cognitive but high emotional type. b) Nurses who thought they had to behave empathically for every patient tended to think that they had to behave empathically in all situations. c) Most nurses found it difficult to deal with the patients empathically due to dual aspects involving both the nurse side and the patient side.