Effects of empathy of oncology nurses on psychological distress and benefit finding in breast cancer patients / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To verify the influence of oncology nurses'empathy on the psychological dis-tress and benefit finding in breast cancer patients. Methods 30 oncology nurses were selected by random sampling and their empathy scores were measured with the interpersonal reactivity index (IRI-C).And they were divided into three groups based on empathy scores. 12 breast cancer patients from each primary nurse were selected by random sampling.Their psychological distress and benefit finding were measured by distress thermometer (DT) and benefit finding scale (BFS).Variance analysis was used to compare psychological distress and benefit finding among patients in different groups. The effect of nurse empathy on patients psy-chological distress and benefit finding was measured by Spearman correlation analysis and logistic regression. Results The empathy score of nurses was (44.87±17.23).The difference of empathy score in the three groups of nurses was statistically significant (F=55.941,P<0.01).There was no significant difference in psy-chological distress (low-score group5.0(4.0,6.0),middle-score group5.0(4.0,6.0),high-score group5.0 (4.0,6.0)) and benefit finding (low-score group47.5(42.0,52.8),middle-score group48.0(43.0,54.0), high-score group46.0(42.0,52.0)) in the three groups of patients at admission(P>0.05),while at dis-charge,the psychological distress of the patients in the high-score nurse group was lower than that of the low-score nurse group (P<0.01),and the benefit was higher than that of the low-score group (P<0.01).There was a negative correlation between the nurses'empathy abilities and patients'psychological distress ( r=-0.470, P<0.01) ,and a positive correlation between the nurses'empathy abilities with the patients'benefit finding ( r=0.521,P<0.01).When controlling for other variables,patients in nurse group with higher empathy scores would result in lower psychological distress(95％CI=0.042-0.397) and higher benefit finding (95％CI=0. 095-0.554) than patients in nurse group with lower empathy scores.Conclusion Oncology nurses'empathy effect breast cancer patients'psychological distress and benefit finding.Nurses should enhance their empathy further.