Developing Empathy in Nurses: An Inservice Training Program - Article Critique

This article critique discusses the effectiveness of in-service communication in enhancing the empathic skills of nursing professionals. The study conducted by Ançel (2006) reveals a statistically significant increase in empathic skills of nursing professionals. The article evaluates the strength and weakness of the study.

Running head: ARTICLE CRITIQUE
Article Critique
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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ARTICLE CRITIQUE
Ançel, G. (2006). Developing empathy in nurses: An inservice training program. Archives of
psychiatric nursing, 20(6), 249-257.
Article summary
Empathitic skills among the nursing professionals are regarded as an central pillar
behind nurse-patient interaction (Morse, Bottorf, Anderson, O’Brien & Soldberg, 2006).
Ançel (2006) conducted a study with an aim to determine effectiveness of in-service
communication in enhancing the empathic skills of the nursing professionals. The data was
collected via using nurse information form and nurse satisfaction. The author also used the
scale of Empathic Communication skills B development procedure developed by Dokmen in
order to measure the level of empathic skills among the nursing professionals. The analysis of
the data was done statistically via using chi-square test, standard deviation and repeated
measures of analysis variance. The results revealed statistically significant value, which
showed increase in the empathic skills of the nursing professionals in relation to the in-
service communication training.
Article evaluation: strength and weakness
The main strength of the study conducted by Ançel (2006) is its high sample size.
Ançel (2006) conducted study with 263 in-patient nurses of Hacettepe University Hospital.
Out of 263, the responses of 73 nurses were excluded due to in appropriate responses and
thereby making the final sample size of 190 nurses. According to Marshall, Cardon, Poddar
& Fontenot (2013), high sample size in the quantitative analysis helps to reduce the level of
bias response and thereby helping to obtain authentic results.
The main limitation of the study is, the study only measured the increase in the
empathetic skills of the nursing professionals based on the verbal responses (satisfaction

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ARTICLE CRITIQUE
form). However, the study failed to record the personal reflection of the nursing professionals
in order to study their views about empathetic skills upon in service communication training.
According to Pietkiewicz & Smith (2014), recording reflection helps to study the actual
emotional consequences of the participants. Recording the emotions and feelings of the
nursing professionals will help the researcher to perform interpretative phenomenological
analysis and thereby opening the avenue to study the view-point of the nursing professionals
on empathic skills upon in-service training.

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ARTICLE CRITIQUE
References
Ançel, G. (2006). Developing empathy in nurses: An inservice training program. Archives of
psychiatric nursing, 20(6), 249-257.
Marshall, B., Cardon, P., Poddar, A., & Fontenot, R. (2013). Does sample size matter in
qualitative research?: A review of qualitative interviews in IS research. Journal of
Computer Information Systems, 54(1), 11-22.
Pietkiewicz, I., & Smith, J. A. (2014). A practical guide to using interpretative
phenomenological analysis in qualitative research psychology. Psychological
Journal, 20(1), 7-14.