Empathy In Communication and its Correlation to Burnout among Philippine General Hospital Ward Nurses

Abstract

In health services, stress is presumed to be attached to its nature of work. Emergency rooms and intensive care units connote a stressful atmosphere because of the workload and pressure. On the other hand, wards are mostly associated with therapy and healing for patients. Also, it’s in the wards where nurse and patient get to communicate more. This research has explored the possibility of how nurses in wards can also be victims of burnout. Since interaction with the patient is prominent in this setting, this research has also explored into how empathy comes into play in nurse to patient communication, and how the communicative responsiveness of nurses can ultimately promote or decrease the occurrence of burnout. Also, this study aimed to describe how Filipino nurses would empathize in i elation to the Filipino’s ability of pakikipagkapwa and pakikiramdam. This research has used an instrument from Miller, et. Al's (1988) concerning empathy and communicative responsiveness as triggers of burnout. Fifty-five respondents from five Philippine General charity wards have participated in the study, through which the correlations between emotional contagion, empathic concern, communicative responsiveness, and the three burnout stages (depersonalization, lack of personal accomplishment, and emotional exhaustion) have been measured. Also, through the survey, the participants have described how they verbally or nonverbally express their empathy to patients. Results show that empathic concern is more prevalent as a dimension of empathy among the nurses. Empathic concern also has a moderate correlation with communicative responsiveness. Communicative responsiveness is significantly linked to lack of personal accomplishment, in such a way that the less communicative responsiveness a nurse has, the less sense of personal accomplishment there is. Among the three stages of burnout, emotional exhaustion and lack of personal accomplishment are prevalent, albeit in low degrees. Among the phases of burnout, depersonalization is most influential to onset of other stages. The PGH nurses ultimately show their empathy by doing their jobs efficiently and by treating them as equals and as people. They try their best in treating their patients with respect, because of the notion that they deserve respect as fellow human beings. Aside from messages that are meant to achieve their tasks as nurses, like reminding the patient to take medication and explaining the patients’ situation, the nurses show empathy by engaging in some small talk, giving advice on things other than medical concerns, by showing encouragement and optimism, and saying that they’re ready to help in anyway possible. This extension of their services by interacting beyond the required has shown how these PGH nurses strive in keeping the sense of kapwa (shared inner self) alive by showing the patients that both nurse and patient are working together on the patient’s 'getting well’.