Empatiskt bemötande och stress och återhämtning

Abstract

Empathy is an important issue in people-oriented work such as dental care and care. There are theories that stress affects empathy in a negative way by causing lethargy and cynicism and that recovery can reduce the stress which indirectly could affect the ability to give empathic treatment which means treat other persons well when working with people. 

The purpose of this study was to see if there were differences in self-reported empathy, stress and recovery among persons with different length of professional experience, type of education and educational level. In addition, correlations between self-reports of empathy, stress and recovery were tested. Also tests to measure empathic treatment among fictive cases both from health care and dental care situations were done. There were 40 participants in the study, which worked as assistant nurses or nurses or were under education for nursing specialists or dental hygienists.  Pearson’s correlation analysis and one way analysis of variance, ANOVA, were used for the statistical analysis. 

In this study it seemed like younger persons with fewer years of experience were both more stressed and more empathic than older persons with longer experience which seem to be less stressed but also less empathic, while education type or level seemed to not matter. The fictive cases should be developed more. No differences between educational groups at different levels were found in this study, nor could any differences be seen among different professions. This study could inspire further research in the field of empathic treatment and authenticity.