Development of an Effective Scale for Measuring Empathy of Indian Nurses

Abstract

Empathy is an emotion that allows a person to enter another’s shoes and understand where they come from. It is also an important emotion that empowers healthcare providers to care for patients and each other and is essential to engage patients as partners in care. It is an emotion much needed in nurses as they are in regular touch with patients and their families. However not much study has been done on the empathetic behavior of Indian Nurses. The Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE) is the best-known tool globally for measuring empathy in of healthcare professionals. However, there are no existing tools that capture the Indian context for empathy– these factors include the bearing that the socio-economic strata, family and educational background and shortage of resources in the Indian Nursing scenario and their influence on the motivation and empathetic behavior of nurses. This paper addresses a pilot study that was conducted on 18 Indian nurses to arrive at a scale to measure empathy in the Indian Nursing scenario. Various keywords related to empathy were identified from interviews with experts (Human Factors, Healthcare and Behavioral Design). The new empathy scale covers cognitive, affective, and motivational aspects of empathy, and the responses for each item was consistently rated by Indian nurses (Cronbach’s alpha > 0.70). Therefore, the new empathy scale is reliable.