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Emphatic Tendency Level of Participating and Non-Participating Nursing Students to Case Based Role Play Activities
JOURNAL OF YOUTH RESEARCHES
the development skill of empathy. Emphatic tendency, however, builds the emotional
aspect, and reveals the potential of a person about showing empathy (Dökmen, 1994,
p.134-175; Mete and Gerçek 2005, p. 11-17).
Many study findings tried to reveal the efficiency of empathy thematic healthcare. Reyn-
olds and Scott (2000, p. 226-34) stated in their study the relations between the high
empathy level of healthcare professionals, and the positive patient results (coping with
headache, pulse and respiration rate, relief in the level of anxiety and worry). Hence, em-
pathy has a key role in reaching positive results in nursing care. There are studies reveal-
ing whether empathic tendency improves through education for nurses (Sabancıoğulları
et al. 2007, p. 1-6; Tutuk et al. 2002, p. 36-41) or not (Arifoğlu and Razı, 2011, p. 7-11;
Mete and Gerçek 2005, p. 11-17).
There have been no studies in Turkish nursing programmes to develop empathic tenden-
cies, in which role-play events based on case-based events are portrayed and animated,
and then emotion and thought are discussed. In this context, the study was conducted
as non-randomized parallel controlled research in order to determine the emphatic ten-
dency level of nursing students participating and non-participating in case based role
play activities.
Material Method
The research was carried out with nursing students of a state university in spring semes-
ter. The population of the study consisted of 453 students from the Nursing Department.
Drama Course took place in the first grade curriculum in 2015-2016 educational year
for the first time as an elective course. 44 students who took this course constituted the
study group, whereas 165 not taking this course formed the control group. Randomiza-
tion could not be provided, do the selection of this course was determinant in the forma-
tion of the study group.
The Practice of Case Based Role Play Activities
Case based role play activities were conducted for 14 weeks (28 hours) with the study
group within the context of the curriculum of the Drama Course. Students received the-
oretic lectures about drama, empathy, and communication skills for the first six weeks of
the programme, and in the last eight weeks they were given role play activities.
Prior to the role play activities, students were asked to form groups 7-8, and were asked
to perform a case based role play activity, one group per week as an improvisation within
20-40 minutes. At the end of the role play activities of students, expression, evaluation,
and discussion of emotions and thoughts were provided within and among the groups.
