Empathy among nursing students and its socio demographic correlates: A descriptive study

Mrs. Jessa George; Manoj Kumar L; Libina Babu

Volume : V, Issue : VIII, August - 2016

Empathy among nursing students and its socio demographic correlates: A descriptive study

Mrs. Jessa George, Manoj Kumar L, Libina Babu

Abstract :

 The emotional realm it is of empathy seems somewhat different from the cognitive, and it is the emotional domain with which we are centrally concerned. Nurses are handling with the life of human beings. A descriptive study was conducted to assess the level of empathy among nursing students and to find out the association between empathy and selected socio–demographic variables. A sample of 197 nursing students was taken on the basis of total enumeration sampling from Sree Gokulam Nursing College, Venjaramoodu. The empathy among nursing students was assessed by using multi–dimensional emotional empathy scale. The scores of the scale were categorized as no empathy, mild empathy, moderate empathy and high empathy. Based on the scores and demographic variables the assumptions are tested to see whether there will be a significant association between level of empathy and selected demographic variables. The result shows that out of 197 subjects 109(55.4%) were having high empathy meanwhile 89(41.6%) subjects with medium empathy, 5(2.5%) subjects with low empathy and only 1(0.5%) subject with no empathy. The association between empathy and selected socio–demographic variables were computed and found that only age is having significant association with empathy at 0.05 levels.