Exploring the Effect of Empathy Training Program for Nurses

"Empathy" is an important foundation for nurses to communicate with patients and establish trust relationships. If nurses lack of empathy literacy or cannot apply empathy communication skills, the role of establishing therapeutic interpersonal relationships with patients or family members will affect the professional performance of nurses and the quality of nursing care. Therefore, improving nurses' empathy literacy and practical application ability has a great correlation with good care quality. However, domestic and international research on the correlation of empathy for nurses are not enough and lack of training program, which show the topic of this research is worth exploring.

The research purpose is to investigate the effectiveness of empathy training program for nurses, as well as to investigate the effectiveness of learning satisfaction for nurses and the empathy training program learning subjective experience of nurses.

In order to make the evaluation of research effectiveness more specific and objective, and also hoped that nurses can be the subject of effectiveness evaluation, and have a deeper understanding of their subjective experiences and feelings. Therefore, the effectiveness evaluation of empathy training program for nurses is using method triangulation of the qualitative and quantitative research method.

The quantitative method is the experimental research method using randomization. The nurses receiving the intervention of empathy training program are in the experimental group, while those who do not receive it are in the control group. The effectiveness assessment will use the Empathy Construct Rating Scale (ECRS) and learning satisfaction scale, Empathy Construct Rating Scale (ECRS) required to be completed by both the experimental group and control group. ECRS perform the pre-test, post-test and post-post-test assessments. The pre-test perform before the implementation of empathy training program, and perform the post-test at week 8 the end of empathy training program, and after 8 weeks of post-test performed the post-post-test. Only experimental group require to complete learning satisfaction scale, perform the post-test at week 8 the end of empathy training program. Descriptive phenomenological research method is used as the qualitative method to explore the empathy training program learning subjective experience of nurses. This study will use purposive sampling to enroll experimental group who has received empathy training program learning, and then perform individual in-depth interviews after the end of empathy training program. Non-structured interview guides are used.

Hopefully, this study may develop an empathy training program which is suitable for nurses. This can enhance the empathy literacy and practical application ability for nurses.