Heart health whispering: A randomized, controlled pilot study to promote nursing student perspective-taking on carers’ health risk behaviors

Abstract

BackgroundLifestyle counseling is described as a “major breakthrough” in the control of chronic diseases. Counseling can be challenging to nurses due their lack of motivation to counsel, hesitancy to appear non-judgmental, lack of empathy, and lack of time. Nurses voice their need for more training in counseling communication skills. Our main objective was to engage in ongoing development and testing of a promising Heart Health Whispering perspective-taking intervention on nursing students’ clinical empathy, perceptual understanding, and client readiness to alter health risk behaviors.MethodsIn this randomized controlled pilot study, the full intervention (perspective-taking instructions, practice, and video-feedback) and partial intervention (video-feedback only) comprised 24 and 18 nursing students, respectively. Quantitative data were collected with a 10-item pre- and post-intervention clinical empathy tool, a one-item ‘readiness to change’ health risk behavior tool plus similarity ratings on students’ empathic accuracy were calculated. Data were analyzed using Independent Samples t Tests and mixed model ANCOVA models. Students’ and actors’ evaluative responses toward the intervention phases were collected by handwritten notes, and analyzed using content analysis and constant comparison techniques.ResultsThe main finding was that students in the full intervention group reported greater clinical empathy in the post versus baseline condition. Students underestimated their clinical empathy in comparison to carers’ reports in the post-condition. In both intervention groups, carers reported more readiness to change in the post-condition. Carers identified favorable and unfavorable perceptions and outcomes of approaches taken by students. Students desired immediate and direct feedback after the video-dialogue and -tagging exercise.ConclusionsHeart Health Whispering is a promising intervention to help educators in basic and continuing education to bolster nurse confidence in empathic conversations on health risk behaviors. This intervention incorporates commonly used strategies to teach empathic communication along with a novel video-analysis application of a perspective-taking task. Student and carer actor comments highlighted the value in opportunities for students to engage in self-evaluation and practicing the empathic process of taking the client’s perspective on health risk behaviors.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12912-018-0291-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Assessing the effect of empathy-enhancing interventions in health education and training: a systematic review of randomised controlled trials

“…23 29 37 38 47 One study used a mixed student and professional population (nursing students and nurse practitioners). 40 Five trials used multiple sites, 23 30 36 37 40 and five were cluster RCTs. 23 36 37 49 52 Ten studies defined both inclusion and exclusion criteria for the study.…”

Stakeholder perspectives of compassion in nursing: The development of the compassion strengths model

“…A growing body of research illustrates how courses aimed at teaching nursing students about compassion, care and clinical skills, are effective both when delivered online and in the classroom (Adam & Taylor, ; Adamson & Dewar, ; Bas‐Sarmiento, Fernández‐Gutiérrez, Baena‐Baños, & Romero‐Sánchez, ; Choi, Song, & Oh, ; Cunico, Sartori, Marognolli, & Meneghini, ; Edwards, Nash, Sacre, Courtney, & Abbey, ; Hofmeyer et al, ; Lobchuk et al, ; McConville & Lane, ). Whilst promising, the results of these studies mainly focused on developing course content, and offer little in the way of self‐care techniques.…”

“…Without the correct support, nursing students can experience burnout long before they even become registered, prompting some to leave the profession (Rudman & Gustavsson, 2012). In relation to this, some believe that the art of compassionate care has been replaced by the science of clinical work in nursing (Bradshaw, 1998;Palos, 2014 Oh, 2015;Cunico, Sartori, Marognolli, & Meneghini, 2012;Edwards, Nash, Sacre, Courtney, & Abbey, 2008;Hofmeyer et al, 2018;Lobchuk et al, 2018;McConville & Lane, 2006). Whilst promising, the results of these studies mainly focused on developing course content, and offer little in the way of self-care techniques.…”

Perceptions of an evidence-based empathy mobile app in post-secondary education

“…Cognitive empathy is studied in a variety of fields, such as healthcare (e.g., Blanch-Hartigan and Ruben 2013;Lobchuk et al 2016Lobchuk et al , 2018, psychology (e.g., Marangoni et al 1995;Vorauer and Sasaki 2014), business (e.g., Ku et al 2015), and law (e.g., Bandes 2009). One frequently-used paradigm involves filming an interaction between two people, having the interaction members report what they were thinking and feeling throughout the interaction, having the interaction members guess what the other person was thinking and feeling throughout the interaction, and then providing an accuracy score (Ickes 2001).…”

“…People vary in their ability to engage in cognitive empathy, but fortunately, it is a skill that can be taught (e.g., Brunero et al 2010;Richardson et al 2015;Teding van Berkhout and Malouff 2016). One way that cognitive empathy can be taught is by using technology (e.g., Lobchuk et al 2018). The present research examines people's perceptions of a cognitive empathy-training mobile app as well as how perceptions of cognitive empathy's importance vary by profession.…”