Undergraduate Nursing Students Empathy Characteristics And Related Factors

Objective To investigate the characteristics of nursing undergraduates'(nursing students) empathy and to explore the correlation of empathy with personality and family envinment, and to provide evidence for empathic training.Methods A total of 184 nursing undergraduates were investigated by using a self-designed demographic questionnaire, the Interpersonal Reactive Index (IRI-C), Big Five Inventory (BFI) and the Family Assessment Device(FAD) through stratified sampling.SPSS 13.0 was applied to analyse the data.Iinternal realibily analysis was used to identify the realibity of each questionnaire;Descriptive analysis, T-test and F-test were applied to investigate the characteristics of nursing students'empathy; Pearson correlation analysis was adopted to analyze the relations between empathy and each factor; Stepwise regression analysis was applied to ideniify the factors which affect nursing students'empathy.Results①The Cronbach a of each questionnaire and dimensions in each questionnaire was between 0.55-0.89, the scales had good reliability.②The total score of IRI-C was 57.05±7.84,the item mean score was 2.59,higher then mean score 2. It's showed that nursing students'empathy was slightly higher then miaddle level.③Female nurse students scored higher in personal distress scale than that of male, class-leader scored higher in perspective-taking scale than that of non-class-leader, and single-child scored lower in empathic concern scale than that of non-single-child, nurse students come from middle or rich family scored higher in personal distress scale than that of students come from poor family (p<0.05, p<0.01).while the evaluation difference in different grades,born-cities and family-forms has no statistical significant (F=2.13,F=2.03,P> 0.05).④The total score of IRI-C was positively correlated with dimensions of neuroticism,agreeableness and openness of BFI and problem solving,roles,communication,affective responsiveness (P<0.05,P<0.01)⑤Stepwise regression analysis showed that agreeableness, neuroticism, openness and problem solving were the main fluence factors which can explain 25.7% of the total variance of empathy.Conclusion①Nursing undergraduates'empathy is satisfactory, higher then middle level. Nursing students of different demographic have different level of empathy. Empathy can't be affected by grade, born-city and economy of family.②Empathy is correlated with personalities and family envinment.③of neuroticism, agreeableness, and openness are influencing factors of students'empathy. It's suggested that cultivation their emotions and healthy personality should be strengthed to advance students'empathy.④Nursing students'personality dimensions and family functioning can predict the level of empathy effectively.