The role of personality factors and moral growth in predicting emotional empathy of nurses

Establishing empathetic relationships between nurses and patients is one of the important issues of serious nursing job that plays an important role in improving patients. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of personality factors and moral development in nurses' emotional empathy. The research design was correlational and the statistical population of the study included all nurses working in Kosar Hospital in Semnan in 2017. 200 participants (154 females and 46 males) participated as a sample of the study by cluster random sampling of empathy-emotional questionnaires Mehrabian & Epstein, (1976), completed five personality factors (Costa & McCrae, 1992; and Gibbs & Bassinger & Fuller, 1992). The results of regression analysis using SPSS25 software showed that moral growth, factors of conscience and neuroticism were able to positively predict empathy, respectively, and explained a total of 19% of the changes in empathy. Due to the importance of the empathy component, the results of this study can be used in the process of evaluation and employment of nurses.