Introduction: Empathic healthcare in a clinical setting offers advantages associated with greater patient satisfaction, better adherence to treatment recommendations, improved treatment outcomes and fewer errors in the care process. Empathy encompasses learned emotional-cognitive responses that nursing students can acquire and develop during study and clinical training. Among nursing students, empathy is often linked to stress. Stressors related to clinical training and academic workload contribute to student stress during the academic year. Objective: The purpose of this master’s thesis is to examine four aspects of empathic responsiveness among undergraduate nursing students. We investigated whether there are differences in empathic responses between students from different academic years and between genders. Additionally, we explored the relationship between empathic responsiveness and stress. Methods: We employed a non-experimental cross-sectional research method. The research instrument used for this study included two questionnaires: the Interpersonal Reactivity Index and the Perceived Stress Questionnaire. Students reported on their perceived stress levels and four aspects of empathic responsiveness: perspective taking, fantasy, empathic concern, and personal distress. The research was conducted among undergraduate nursing students in their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd years at a selected higher education institution in Slovenia in the academic years 2021/22 and 2022/23. A total of 351 female and 60 male students participated in the study. The participants included 152 1st year students, 145 2nd year students and 114 3rd year students. Hypothesis testing involved independent samples t-tests, one-way analysis of variance with Scheffé post hoc comparisons, and calculation of correlation coefficients. The significance level was set at p < 0.05. Results: Our study revealed no significant differences in empathic responsiveness among students based on their academic year. However, female students consistently rated all four aspects of empathic responsiveness higher than male students. We also found that stress levels were significantly higher in the 1st year compared to the 2nd and 3rd years, although the effect of academic year on stress levels was small. Perceived stress among students was positively and moderately associated with personal distress, and weakly positively correlated with fantasy and empathic concern. Discussion and conclusion: An important contribution of our research lies in the finding that there was no observed decrease in personal distress among nursing students with the increasing year of study. This means that as students’ progress to higher study years, they experience approximately the same level of anxiety and personal strain in empathic situations, despite gaining more practical experience working with patients during their studies. Based on these findings, we would recommend implementing measures to promote perspective-taking and empathic care, as well as preventing personal distress in empathic situations and stress among nursing students.
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