Development of a novel empathy-related video-feedback intervention to improve empathic accuracy of nursing students: A pilot study.

BACKGROUND: Stressed family carers engage in health-risk behaviours that can lead to chronic illness. Innovative strategies are required to bolster empathic dialogue skills that impact nursing student confidence and sensitivity in meeting carers' wellness needs. PURPOSE: To report on the development and evaluation of a promising empathy-related video-feedback intervention and its impact on student empathic accuracy on carer health risk behaviours. DESIGN: A pilot quasi-experimental design study with eight pairs of 3rd year undergraduate nursing students and carers. METHODS: Students participated in perspective-taking instructional and practice sessions, and a 10-minute video-recorded dialogue with carers followed by a video-tagging task. Quantitative and qualitative approaches helped us to evaluate the recruitment protocol, capture participant responses to the intervention and study tools, and develop a tool to assess student empathic accuracy. MAIN RESULTS: The instructional and practice sessions increased student self-awareness of biases and interest in learning empathy by video-tagging feedback. Carers felt that students were 'non-judgmental', inquisitive, and helped them to 'gain new insights' that fostered ownership to change their health-risk behaviour. There was substantial Fleiss Kappa agreement among four raters across five dyads and 67 tagged instances. CONCLUSION: In general, students and carers evaluated the intervention favourably. The results suggest areas of improvement to the recruitment protocol, perspective-taking instructions, video-tagging task, and empathic accuracy tool.

Immigrant Filipinos as caregivers for Filipino loved ones with chronic illness in Canada

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to examine the type of care, factors influencing caregivers' strains, and caregiving outcomes of immigrant Filipino caregivers to senior patients with chronic and/or serious life-threatening conditions in Canada. DESIGN: This study employed a qualitative method with five female caregivers and five female and male patients who were Filipino immigrants in Winnipeg, Canada. Audio-recorded interviews were guided by a semi-structured open-ended interview script. Transcripts of audio-recorded interview data were analyzed using content analysis. FINDINGS: Findings of the study revealed that female caregivers' tasks included providing personal care, assisting with mobility and giving medications, as well as, performing care management tasks like arranging social services and transportation. Caregivers' economic, financial, physical, emotional and time strains were influenced by their employment arrangements, household status, income, social networks, the life cycle stage, housing, and neighborhood. Caregiving outcomes for employed female caregivers resulted often in economic and emotional distress and even poor health. CONCLUSION: The study's results showed how health care providers need to provide more support for immigrant caregivers dealing with patients and with chronic illness, memory loss, and/or mental health issues--- especially those caregivers and patients who live in impoverished neighborhoods. Furthermore, removing factors contributing to caregivers' strains such as employment arrangements, housing conditions, and the promotion of culturally appropriate health practices will enable immigrant caregivers and patients to enhance quality of care living in Canada.