The purpose of this project was to determine whether an empathy skills training course would produce an improvement in student nurses' Empathy Scale scores. Empathic skills were defined as the ability to communicate an accurate understanding of another's feeling and experience, and were operationally measured with a paper-and-pencil test (the Empathy Scale, Gazda, et al., 1977). In a posttest-only control group experimental design, a random sample of two groups of nursing students completed these measures. Empathy Scale scores were the dependent variable and the empathy skills course was the independent variable. A t-test demonstrated that students who had completed the empathy skills course had significantly lower (more empathic) scores on the Empathy Scale (p less than .05). Analysis of demographic data using Pearson's correlation coefficient showed no significant relationship between scores on the Empathy Scale and age (r = -.16), nor between scores and years in the health care field (r = .06).
本项目的目的是确定共情技能培训课程是否会提高学生护士的共情量表得分。共情技能被定义为准确传达对他人感受和经历理解的能力，并通过纸笔测试（共情量表，加兹达等人，1977年）进行操作性测量。在仅后测控制组实验设计中，两组护理专业学生的随机样本完成了这些测量。共情量表得分是因变量，共情技能课程是自变量。t检验表明，完成共情技能课程的学生在共情量表上的得分显著更低（更具共情能力）（p小于0.05）。使用皮尔逊相关系数对人口统计学数据进行分析表明，共情量表得分与年龄之间没有显著关系（r = -0.16），得分与在医疗保健领域的工作年限之间也没有显著关系（r = 0.06）。
