Is the empathic concern of nurses a gender issue?

• Main Author: Ribeiro, Maria
• Publication Date: 2024
• Other Authors: Antunes, Maria, Carvalho, Amâncio
• Format: Article
• Language: por; eng
• Source: Repositórios Científicos de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP)
• Download full: https://doi.org/10.37914/riis.v7i1.297
• topic: empatia; enfermeiros de saúde da família; enfermagem familiar; comunicação; empathy; family nurse practitioners; family nursing; communication; empatía; enfermeras de salud familiar; enfermería familiar; comunicación

Background: the family nurse must focus on the family as a system and on each of its constituent elements. Hence the importance of empathy as a communicational skill. Objectives: to assess the empathic concern of the nurses in the sample and analyze the relationship between empathic concern and sociodemographic characteristics. Methodology: this is a descriptive-correlational, cross-sectional study, with a sample of 87 nurses to whom a questionnaire was applied. The data collection procedure was carried out by the researchers during the month of January 2019. IBM SPSS software was used for data processing, having resorted to descriptive and inferential statistics. The significance level considered was 5%. Results: of the total sample (n= 87), the majority was female (79%) and fell within the age group of 39 years or less (54%). More than 50% of the nurses presented a good level of Empathic Concern. Nurses' Empathic Concern differed significantly between nurses of different gender (Student's t: p ≥ 0.004), and women obtained a higher mean, presenting a higher Empathic Concern. Conclusion: the Empathic Concern of nurses can be considered good, with women showing a higher degree of empathy than men.