I’m working on a writing discussion question and need support to help me learn.
Below posted is an article posted, please do a 170-words response and include reference with doi. I have also attached a screenshot of a sample response.
One article that I felt is of great benefit to our patients and us as nurses presented research that placed the nurse in the patients’ shoes by way of a hospital simulation. The research consisted of 75 BSN students and they were placed in this environment to understand why empathy is so important and what it means to a patient when the nurse conveys empathy. The research aimed to analyze what nursing students understand about empathy and have them exhibit how it is used in practice based on the nurse-patient relationship. This is an important study because it helps us as nurses better understand how the patient feels being in a situation where they are helpless. Nursing requires very intimate interactions with the patients; for this reason, we need to be as understanding and helpful as we can to help our patients. Giving the nursing students a different perspective creates a paradigm shift and provides a greater understanding of what it’s like to be a patient in the hospital who has lost their independence. In my personal life, I’ve had a coworker admit to me that when she first started nursing, she wasn’t as empathetic to the patients as she should have been, it was only when she became a patient and had a bad experience with a nurse that she understood how it feels to be in the predicament. She said that from that point on, she did her best to ensure that her patients’ needs were met. Gaining this type of understanding helps us to grow into better nurses. For me personally, my career path has made me more empathic as a nurse. I initially started as a CNA and worked my way up to become a nurse. Being a CNA means that you are around the patient a lot longer than other professionals in the hospital. You are there when the patient is sad, upset, confused, etc. and you are sometimes there when the patient takes their last breath. If you have a heart and you love helping people, then you can’t help but become more empathetic. When I became an LPN, I carried those same views that I had when I was a CNA. I am also more empathetic with my CNAs at work because I understand that it is hard work, and I will help them as much as I can when I have my downtime. The results of the study were that the students understood the importance of empathy and they were able to observe everything from the patient’s perspective (Beest et al., 2018). The article concluded that four themes were identified during the study: Endurance, silent scream for attention, scary dependency, and confrontation (Beest et al., 2018). These four themes were exhibited by the nursing students in the patient’s position. I understand the theme of endurance as a patient who accepts that they are dependent on someone else temporarily and understands that it may not be the best of care, but they made it up in their mind that they will not let that define their emotions. A silent scream for attention sounds to me like the patient is speaking and the nurse is not trying to understand what the patient is feeling. Scary dependency is self-explanatory, and confrontation would be someone’s opposite of endurance.
References
Beest, H., Bemmel, M.V., & Adriaansen, M. (2018). Nursing student as patient: experiential learning in a hospital simulation to improve empathy of nursing students. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences, 32(4), 1390-1397. https://doi.org/10.1111/scs.12584
Moudatsou, M., Stavropoulou, A., Philalithis, S., & Koukouli, S. (2020). The Role of Empathy in Health and Social Care Professionals. MDPI, 8(1), 26. DOI: 10.3390/healthcare8010026
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