Empathy is an integral component of the nurse-patient relationship and is critical to the development of the therapeutic relationship. The focus of this qualitative descriptive study is to explore student nurses' views on empathy. Student nurses related the concept of empathy, with emotion, conscientiousness, care, communication and support. Empathy for these students was the combination of cognitive, emotional and functional characteristics and skills. Each category, which emerged from the data analysis, contained the concepts of emotion, knowledge and skill. These concepts found to be interrelated and interdependent. This led to the formation of a core category called "Empathy equals Match".
Objective: To record and identify the characteristics of nursing handovers in a tertiary hospital. Method: Observational study. Twenty-two nurses participated in 11 nursing handovers in 2015/16, using a recorded audio system and an unstructured observation form. Hierarchical cluster analysis was performed. Results: Thirty characteristics were identified. The nursing handovers were based on the clinical status of patients, and all nurses obtained specialized scientific knowledge specific to the clinical environment. The information used was not based on nursing diagnoses and not in accordance with best nursing clinical practice. The following four clusters emerged among the 30 characteristics: 1) the use of evidence-based nursing practice, 2) the nonuse of evidence-based nursing practice and its correlation with strained psychological environment, 3) patient management and the clinical skills/knowledge of nurses, and 4) handover content, quality of information transferred and specialization. Conclusion: Multiple characteristics were observed. The majority of characteristics were grouped based on common features, and 4 main clusters emerged. The investigation and understanding of structural relations between these characteristics and their respective clusters may lead to an improvement in the quality of nursing health care services.
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