Abstract
Objective
To assess the method of empathy intervention in nursing students in relation to the three dimensions of empathy: cognitive, affective, and behavioral.
Methods
A systematic literature review was conducted following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) 2020 guideline. A search for articles in two databases (ScienceDirect and Taylor & Francis) revealed 99 articles. One author independently assessed articles for inclusion, resulting in 10 articles that met the inclusion criteria.
Results
Based on a review of ten extracted journal articles, nine interventions showed increases in empathy, while one intervention did not show such outcomes. Four studies (the simulation-based empathic communication training intervention, the situated teaching program, high-fidelity simulation [HFS] training, and the structured empathy educational model [EEM]) discussed the impact of interventions on the empathy dimension, while the remaining five only explained the impact of the intervention on empathy in general.
Conclusions
The result of this study highlight the need for future research to design empathy interventions for nursing students that effectively target both the affective and behavioral dimensions of empathy.