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Emphatic Tendency Level of Participating and Non-Participating Nursing Students to Case Based Role Play Activities
JOURNAL OF YOUTH RESEARCHES
Within the scope of this study, the study group participated in case based role play activ-
ities for 14 weeks (28 hours). When compared to the control group, empathic tendency
level of the students in the study group revealed statistically no significant difference.
When some students were analysed, it was found out that empathic skills of nursing
students can be improved through efficient methods and practices during Bachelor’s
Degree Education (Arifoğlu and Razı, 2011, p. 7-11; Ay, 2006, p. 95-105; Mert and Sezgin,
2011, p. 9-13; Mete and Gerçek 2005, p. 11-17). Some of these studies claim that this
skill can be improved within the scope of “empathy training”, whereas other studies state
that it can be improved through “communication skill training”. On the other hand, there
are some studies revealing that the empathic tendency can be improved through training
(Sabancıoğulları et al. 2007, p. 1-6; Tutuk et al. 2002, p. 36-41), and some other stud-
ies claim that it cannot be improved through training (Arifoğlu and Razı, 2011, p. 7-11;
Mete and Gerçek 2005, p. 11-17). Karaca, Açıkgöz and Akkuş (2013, pp. 118-123), who
were looking for the answer of “Can empathic skill and empathic tendency be improved
with education?” found out that the empathic skill development program of nursing first-
year students significantly increased their empathic skills but did not change the em-
pathic tendency level of the students sufficiently. Within the context of this study, it was
found out that the case-based role play activities conducted as 2 hours per week had
not enough effect on the empathic tendency levels of the nursing student. Therefore, it
was thought that it would be useful to extend role play activities for a longer period in the
process of gaining empathic tendency behaviour.
As an expected conclusion, female participants were found out to have a statistically
significantly higher empathic tendency than male participants. Many research findings
analysed in the literature of this field support our study results and show that women have
higher empathic skills at a significantly higher level than men (Kırımoğlu et al., 2016, p.
5623- 3635; Kolayiş and Yiğitler, 2010, p.572).
An important finding of the study was that empathic tendency of students who prefer
nursing profession to help people were higher. While nursing profession continues to
develop with many changes in the fields of education and care based practice over the
years, the only unchanging aspect is the service given to people (Erdal, 1993, p. 1-7). It is
much easier for nurses who have empathic tendency and transfer their skills to practice
to build communication and interaction with patients, and have their care being accepted
much easier (Reynolds and Scott, 2000, p. 226-34).
As a result, the empathic tendency of nursing students is at moderate level, and as the
education year increases, there has been no change at this level. The case-based role
play activities conducted in our study were ineffective on the empathic tendency levels
of the students.
