Pflegerische Empathie (lernen) – Sichtweisen von Pflegelernenden. Eine longitudinale qualitative Interviewstudie

Abstract

The starting point of the dissertation was the question of how the ability to (approximately) grasp the subjective perspective of people in need of care - which is important for nursing activities - develops (further) in nursing education. This ability, for which the term empathy is used, is indisputably a central prerequisite for individual or subject-oriented nursing care. The aim was to generate empirically based findings on learning nursing empathy in German nursing education.

By means of a qualitative longitudinal study, it was investigated what the acquisition processes of empathic competencies look like from the perspective of nineteen learners of elderly care, nursing care as well as of a dual academic nursing education program.

Initial and follow-up interviews were analysed using a hermeneutic procedure and resulted in four ideal-typical understandings of nursing empathy. In addition, factors were identified that influence whether learners act according to their subjective understanding of nursing empathy.

Furthermore, insights into the learning of empathy at learning locations like company and school were generated. In addition to successful teaching-learning processes, these insights also reveal significant problem areas in the current promotion of empathy, including the key problem of learners to successfully regulate their own stressful feelings, thoughts and body sensations in and after empathic contacts, especially with very vulnerable patient groups.

Based on these empirical findings, a theoretical examination of the phenomenon of empathy including a discussion of the international state of research on the topic of "learning empathy in nursing education", fifteen concrete recommendations were developed that aim to improve the quality regarding the promotion of empathic skills in nursing education.