Nurse's Empathy with patient: the effects of perceived social supports and ethical responsibility towards patient

Nurses’ empathy with patients as a ethical behavior to respect the patients’ dignity, always has been considered by hospital managers and policy makers in the health systems. In this regard, it is important to identify the anttecedence that we can increase these behaviors among the nurses by them.
Aim: Current study aimes to test a model that explain the effective factores on nurses’ empathetic behavior with patients.
Using the convenience sampling method, a sample of 143 nurses in a public hospital were selected and the data were gathered. Data were gathered by the POS questionaire, nurses’ job engagement measure and Responsibility measure. Also, the measure of nurses’ empathetic behavior was designed by researcher. Finally, using the SPSS software, data were analysed, and the structural equation modeling with partial least squares approach (Smart PLS Software) was used to analyse the relationships among the variables.
According to the faindings, both affective and instrumental dimention of percived social supports, have positive effects on nurses’ job engagment (respectively β: 0.27, T: 2.41 and β: 0.34, T: 3.13). Moreover, nurses’ job engagement and their ethical responsibility positively have 0.28 and 0.45 effect on their empathy with patients; respectively with T: 3.50 and T: 5.37.
it was concluded that althogh providing social support for nurces, as a managerial factor, positively can be reflected in their empathetic behavior with patients, nurses’ ethical responsibility, as an individual factor, is more important.