“Walking in Their Shoes”: The effects of an immersive digital story intervention on empathy in nursing students

Abstract

Empathy is a specific concept acknowledged in undergraduate nursing curriculum in many countries, such as the United Kingdom (UK), and helping behaviors driven by empathy are enshrined in The Code (NMC 2018). Despite the recognition of its importance, serious failings in patient care in the last decade were reported in countries, such as the UK and Australia, where care was found to be delivered with a lack of empathy, compassion, and dignity, and an increase in abuse and neglect (Andrews & Butler, 2014;Beattie, 2015;Francis, 2013).Health and care policies in many countries have called for the establishment of a culture of compassionate care, highlighting the importance of nurturing qualities such as empathy and compassion among health and care staff to promote dignified, safe, person-centered and compassionate care (Francis, 2013; Welsh Government, 2013a,2013b. Health professional education has a significant role to play in ensuring that students are trained in ways that maximizes the likelihood that this vision is delivered.The aim of this study was to determine the effects of the "Walking in Their Shoes," immersive digital story intervention on empathy in nursing students. The intervention was based on the principles of the Theory of Mind model. According to this model, being able to infer what somebody else is thinking or feeling is critically important in helping one to predict that person's response (e.g. Baron-Cohen et al., 1985). The lack of an empathic response to another person may be due to problems with imagining and valuing another person's thoughts and feelings (Dvash & Shamay-Tsoory, 2014). In a medical

Exploring Digital Empathy in Vietnamese Tertiary EFL Education: Perspectives of Teachers across Career Stages

“…This research suggests that digital empathy goes beyond mere technological proficiency; it involves cultivating an emotionally attuned virtual space conducive to learning. Similarly, Yu et al [7] explored the dimensions of digital empathy in enhancing student engagement. They found that empathetic teacher-student interactions in online settings can lead to increased student motivation and a deeper connection to the learning material.…”

Effects of robot-assisted digital storytelling on hospitalized children’s communication during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…DS has also been applied to nursing education in various training programs, such as taking care of newborns (Petty et al, 2020). Researchers have indicated that with video sounds and lively stories, DS has great potential to facilitate effective communication and enhance learners' empathy in class (Yu et al, 2021). Integration of DS and technological tools can safely deliver health care learning content and create a caring medical environment, which is definitely important during the pandemic (Babal et al, 2020).…”

Psychometric evaluation of the ‘Jefferson Scale of Empathy’ in a sample of nursing students in the United Kingdom

“…Originally, the scale was developed by Hojat et al (2001) to measure empathy in medical students, it has been applied to measure empathy in various groups of health and allied health professionals and students, such as nurses, pharmacists and occupational therapists (e.g. Castillo et al, 2021;Mirzayeh et al, 2022;Yu et al, 2021). The scale has been used in 88 countries and translated in 59 languages (Thomas Jefferson University, 2022).…”

“…Empathy is a concept frequently acknowledged to be important in the education and practice of nurses and other health professionals (e.g. medicine, pharmacy and occupational therapy) because it is considered an essential component of quality of patient care (Fashami et al., 2023 ; Hojat et al., 2018 ; Serrada‐Tejeda et al., 2022 ; Yu et al., 2021 ). In counselling psychology, empathy was defined as ‘an ability to sense the client's private world as if it were your own, but without ever losing the ‘as if’ quality’ (Rogers, 1957 , p. 99).…”