Cognitive or Affective Empathy in Oncology Nurses: A Cross-Sectional Study

Amount and style of empathy with cancer patients by healthcare providers, including nurses, is an important subject which affects the patient and his family. This study was designed to determine the amount and type of empathy in nurses at oncology wards.
In this descriptive study with cross-sectional design, 181 nurses were recruited from oncology, hematology, and stem cell transplantation wards of seven educational hospitals affiliated to the three Universities of Medical Sciences in Tehran. First, the lists of all employed nurses in these wards were extracted, and then, after permission from the authorities of the wards and explaining the objectives of the study, the nurses who wished to participate in the study were recruited according to the inclusion criteria by the non-random sampling method. Data were collected using two questionnaires including the demographic/clinical information questionnaire and the interpersonal reactivity index from November to February 2017. Validity and reliability of the questionnaires were determined. Data analysis was performed using descriptive and analytical statistics by the SPSS software version 21.
The results showed that the majority of employed nurses in oncology wards were women (88.3%). The mean age of the employed nurses at oncology wards was 34.92 ± 6.79 years. The empathy score of the nurses was higher in “empathic concern” compared to the other subscales (20.5 ± 5.8). Approximately 89% of the nurses reported average and higher empathy in empathic concern. The subscale of perspective-taking was ranked lower than empathic concern by the nurses. The results of multiple linear regression analyses showed that five variables of age, marital status, work shift, type of employment and having children predicted 26% of changes in nurses’ scores for empathic concern in oncology wards.
Empathic concern as one of the components of affective empathy is higher than the cognitive component in oncology nurses. Therefore, in line with cognitive empathy, perspective- taking could be used as a powerful focus in the planning of educational interventions for the empowerment of oncology nurses.