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’.
