The Patients and Nurses Views of Empathy in Tabriz Teaching Hospitals, 2009.

Abstract

Abstract: Introduction: Although, Empathy is considered as an important aspect for taking care of patients, which leads to increase in attention quality, patients satisfaction and as well, to better treatment of disease, the studies in this field is very limited because of the absence of a single definition and also subtle measurement instruments. The aim of this study was determine the empathy of nurses with patients in Tabriz University of Medical Sciences hospitals. Material & Methods: This study is a descriptive, one, in which 154 nurses from selected medical surgery units in Tabriz University of Medical Sciences by use simple random sampling have been studied. Empathy La -Monica questionnaire has been used that its reliability, in the beginning of the study with the cooperation faculty member and the retest reliability of the questionnaire was first tested on 20 residents, which resulted in acceptable figures. Results: The results show that in the area of nonverbal behavior "I am comforting during periods of stress and uncertainty", in the area of feeling and listening I concentrate another person is saying "the nurses pat attention to the words of patients", in the area of verbal response "I give genuine consultation, advice, assistance and support" in the area of respect of self and others " I protect the self –esteem of others", in the area of openness, Honesty and Flexibility "I give freely without concern for what I will receive in return", this actions had the most average numbers. Conclusion: Even though the present study showed an appropriate face validity and reliability results were different in some aspects with those of other studies. This could be due to the lack of sufficient attention to humanistic aspects of nurse –patient relationship in the educational context of nursing in Iran and the probability of some effective in cultural differences in total score can be impressive factors in these differences. Educational and health authorities and policy makers expect robust action to promote awareness of nursing skills to provide effective empathy.