Can you learn how to be empathic? A new nursing education intervention says yes

It is not easy to change health risk behaviors, and it can be even more difficult for nurses to provide counselling on such delicate issues. In这项试点研究最近出版BMC护理,作者发展了他们的Heart Health Whisperingintervention, teaching nursing students perspective-taking and clinical empathy.

Researchers from the University of Manitoba, Canada, worked towards the development of a promisingHeart Heath Whispering干预措施被认为是填补护理健康促进教育空白的必要条件,因为他们说:“需要培训机会,以培养信心和善解人意的技能。”

由于与慢性病相关的高成本和低生活质量,可以帮助人们改变其健康风险行为的有效咨询系统可以代表一种有用的上游方法来预防疾病而不是治疗疾病。

Buthealth risk behaviors, such as smoking, binge eating or lack of exercise, are often tied to very personal situations and stressful variables, which can be difficult to face in counselling.

如果我们考虑家庭护理人员的例子,这一点尤其清楚,这是由于高期望和与面对护理和就业挑战相关的压力,倾向于从事健康风险行为的大部分人口。不幸的是,照顾者经常报告一种感觉not being heardor understood by care providers, as the latter were perceived as not concerned for their wellbeing.

On the other hand, nurses describe alack of motivation to counsel, due either to clients’ resistance or to lack of empathy, patience or time.

作者解释说,只有当护理人员将视角挑剔,同情倾听和辨别看护者的独特情况时,只有当护理人员为自己的健康风险行为而享有所有权。此外,“护士表现出临床同理心的能力最好在学生一级实现,而他们的态度和技能正在形成。”

报道称,珀耳斯学生接受培训pective-taking enhanced their ‘exploring skills’ and made them feel greater clinical empathy ….

With this in mind, the authors developed theHeart Health Whisperingintervention, ‘a novel person-centered approach for counselling and health promotion.’ Through video-tagging sessions between nursing students and carer actors, they tested how nursing students could learn clinical empathy, especially through self-evaluation and perspective-taking.

观点的观点is a teachable component which, in this context, aims to sensitizes the clinicians to be aware of their own thoughts and feelings regarding risk behaviors, to control them in order to enter ‘in the client’s shoes,’ and to seek validation of his/her inferences of the client’s viewpoint.

Training clinical empathy

在这项试点研究中, the ability to learn clinical empathy was tested in nursing students either receiving or not perspective-taking instructions and training, taking into account both students’ and carer actors’ perceptions.

报道称,珀耳斯学生接受培训pective-taking enhanced their ‘exploring skills’ and made them feel greater clinical empathy, highlighting the potential importance of introducing such training, once standardized, into educational curricula.

During their recorded dialogue with the carer actor, students of both groups demonstrated empathy, even if one group did not receive a preparation training of perspective-taking.

Interestingly, carers rating of the students empathy was higher than the students’ self-assessment and, even more unexpected, carers found the students who did not receive the training more empathic than the others, who seemed sometimes ‘not delving enough’, ‘inauthentic’ or ‘paternalistic.’ It is possible that the trained students ‘were struggling with practicing their new skills resulting in poorer performance than students’ of the other group, who likely were less distracted and just focused on their previously acquired skills, the authors suggest in their discussion.

Carers and students were able to see their recorded dialogue, and this afterwards ‘video analysis’ encouraged self-awareness in the students, who referred to this practice as ‘eye-opening’ and ‘a good way to learn.’

The authors conclude that the results of this pilot study ‘appeared promising and warrant further testing.’ TheHeart Heath Whisperingintervention ‘has implications for ongoing empirical work to … bolster clinician clinical empathy so as to avoid “jumping ahead of the patient” when engaging in therapeutic conversations on carer self-care.’

There is great potential value of such a technique, which gives the students the opportunity to self-evaluate and practice in taking the patients’ perspective, as the long-term goal is to alter health risk behavior choices of family carers and promoting health care by increasing counselors’ communication skills and empathy.

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