Feeling at hospitals: Perspective-taking, empathy and personal distress among professional nurses and nursing students

Belén López-Pérez; Tamara Ambrona; Jennifer Gregory; Eric Stocks; Luis Oceja

doi:10.1016/j.nedt.2013.01.010

Feeling at hospitals: Perspective-taking, empathy and personal distress among professional nurses and nursing students

Belén López-Pérez^*, Tamara Ambrona, Jennifer Gregory, Eric Stocks, Luis Oceja

^*Corresponding author for this work

Division of Psychology Communication and Human Neuroscience (L5)

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

When facing a person in need, professional nurses will tend to adopt an objective perspective compared to nursing students who, instead, will tend to adopt an imagine-other perspective. Consequently, professional nurses will show lower vicarious emotional reaction such as empathy and distress. Using samples from Spain (Studies 1 and 2) and United states (Study 3), we compared perspective taking strategies and the emotional responses of nurses and nursing students when perceiving a sick child (Study 1) and a sick adult (Studies 2 and 3). Taken together, the results supported our hypotheses. We discuss the applied value of considering the relationship between perspective-taking and its emotional consequences for the nursing profession.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	334-338
Number of pages	5
Journal	Nurse Education Today
Volume	33
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2013.01.010
Publication status	Published - Apr 2013

Keywords

Distress
Empathy
Nursing
Perspective taking

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10.1016/j.nedt.2013.01.010

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abstract = "When facing a person in need, professional nurses will tend to adopt an objective perspective compared to nursing students who, instead, will tend to adopt an imagine-other perspective. Consequently, professional nurses will show lower vicarious emotional reaction such as empathy and distress. Using samples from Spain (Studies 1 and 2) and United states (Study 3), we compared perspective taking strategies and the emotional responses of nurses and nursing students when perceiving a sick child (Study 1) and a sick adult (Studies 2 and 3). Taken together, the results supported our hypotheses. We discuss the applied value of considering the relationship between perspective-taking and its emotional consequences for the nursing profession.",

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AU - Stocks, Eric

AU - Oceja, Luis

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Feeling at hospitals: Perspective-taking, empathy and personal distress among professional nurses and nursing students

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Keywords

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