Nursing Students’ Empathy in a Palliative Care Scenario: The Standardized Patient’s Perspective
type: CreativeWork
description: Abstract Background: Numerous definitions of empathy exist, making it difficult to understand the concept and teach others how to develop the skill. There is no one definition of empathy all healthcare disciplines accept, creating an obstacle to a constructive debate over the role and importance of empathy in nursing practice. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing developed the Essentials to address the education-practice gap. This included meeting the physical, psychological, emotional, social, cultural, and spiritual needs of individuals requiring palliative/supportive care. Purpose/Aim: The purpose of this study is to explore nursing students' empathy during a simulation-based palliative care scenario where standardized patients (SPs) play the patient, and the students’ empathy is described from the patient's perspective. This study aims to answer the research question: How do SPs describe their experiences and perceptions of empathy from senior nursing students during a palliative care scenario? Methods: Guided by M. L. Hoffman’s Theory of Moral Psychology and Development, this two-part qualitative descriptive study explores the patient’s perception of empathy. A purposive sample of six SPs played the part of the patient and provided written feedback for each nursing student. Thick, rich descriptions were taken from the written feedback forms. Following the event, semi-structured interviews with the SPs were conducted to gather additional information about their perception of empathy. Thematic analysis was used to identify patterns and themes from the written feedback and interviews. Findings: In this two-phase study, SPs described empathy as the ability of nursing students to acknowledge emotions, understand the patient’s perspective, and validate the patient's experience. The themes in both phases overlapped closely, except for depersonalization and lack of empathy, which were found only in phase two, mainly because some questions in the semi-structu…
abstract: Abstract Background: Numerous definitions of empathy exist, making it difficult to understand the concept and teach others how to develop the skill. There is no one definition of empathy all healthcare disciplines accept, creating an obstacle to a constructive debate over the role and importance of empathy in nursing practice. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing developed the Essentials to address the education-practice gap. This included meeting the physical, psychological, emotional, social, cultural, and spiritual needs of individuals requiring palliative/supportive care. Purpose/Aim: The purpose of this study is to explore nursing students' empathy during a simulation-based palliative care scenario where standardized patients (SPs) play the patient, and the students’ empathy is described from the patient's perspective. This study aims to answer the research question: How do SPs describe their experiences and perceptions of empathy from senior nursing students during a palliative care scenario? Methods: Guided by M. L. Hoffman’s Theory of Moral Psychology and Development, this two-part qualitative descriptive study explores the patient’s perception of empathy. A purposive sample of six SPs played the part of the patient and provided written feedback for each nursing student. Thick, rich descriptions were taken from the written feedback forms. Following the event, semi-structured interviews with the SPs were conducted to gather additional information about their perception of empathy. Thematic analysis was used to identify patterns and themes from the written feedback and interviews. Findings: In this two-phase study, SPs described empathy as the ability of nursing students to acknowledge emotions, understand the patient’s perspective, and validate the patient's experience. The themes in both phases overlapped closely, except for depersonalization and lack of empathy, which were found only in phase two, mainly because some questions in the semi-structu…
author: Anderson, Karen Vivian
keywords: nursing students, empathy, communication, simulation, standardized patients, palliative care, Nursing, Other Nursing, Palliative Nursing
date published: 2026-05-22T07:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T05:41:55Z
provider: University of San Diego
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of San Diego