Living in a poor community or volunteering in one may not make nursing students more empathetic to patients experiencing poverty, according to new research published in the Journal of Nursing Education.
Researchers assessed empathy among 104 nursing students using the Jefferson Empathy Scale, a tool used to measure empathy in healthcare contexts, and a survey focused on attitudes toward poverty.
Researchers found that those who had lived in poverty did not have higher empathy scores. They also discovered that nursing students who volunteered in poor communities had lower empathy scores than their counterparts who did not volunteer in those communities.
"The volunteer experience is central to a lot of medical and nursing-school pedagogy," said Karen Alexander, PhD, RN, study author and assistant professor at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. "It's this idea that exposure is enough to help challenge assumptions and remove stigma. But it may not have the effect we think it's having. Our results suggest that service learning isn't enough, and it may be, in fact, detrimental."
Encouraging nursing students to self-reflect through journaling and discussion with peers may be one way to combat the lack of empathy, said Dr. Alexander.