The assesment of the level of emphatic skill of nurse's working in medical and surgical units

Objective: The objective of this research is to evaluate emphatic skill levels of the nurses working in medical and surgical units.Material and Method: As a descriptive one, this research was performed with 202 nurses who were working in medical, surgical, intensive care and emergency units of a group-A private hospital in Istanbul between the dates of September 24 and October 27, 2010, and who were voluntary to attend the research and filled in the questionnaire form completely. Information Form, Emphatic Skill Scale, Sociotropy-Autonomy Scale were used as data collection tools. Necessary institutional and scale usage permissions were taken. Statistical analysis of data was performed via SPSS version 16.0 program.Findings: It was stated that age average of the nurses who attended the research was 26.78±5.267, majority of them were single (58,9%) and vocational school of health graduate (43,1%), had 0 to 3 years of work experience (37,6%) and were working in surgery units (41,1%). The nurse?s, average of total empathy score (135,56±28,478); averages of total sociotropy score (66,99±15,916) and total autonomy score as sub-dimensions of sociotropy-autonomy scale (74,91±16,608) were found to be at moderate level.Results: It was stated that while nurses? sex, education level, working unit, task in the unit, following the publications that support professional development, sufficient empathy training before and after graduate were effecting the emphatic skill score averages (p<0,05); other variables (such as age, marital status, having children, economical status, work period as a nurse, work period in the current unit, preference status of the current unit, work type, average number of patients cared in a day, feeling competent in understanding the patients, status of on-the-job-training related to the unit worked for) didn?t effect the emphatic skill score averages (p>0,05). It is suggested to assign nurses with master?s degree as a nurse unit manager and to plan postgraduate programs which include empathy training programs.Keywords: Nurse, communication, emphatic skill, sociotropy-autonomy