Health Students’ Attitudes towards Disability

Background: Individuals with disabilities remain one of the most socially excluded segments of the population, constantly fighting for equal rights and social inclusion. Disability is not an easy subject for health professionals to deal with, in part because it crosses many professional and cultural boundaries.Objective: The aim of this research is to analyze and understand the various attitudes toward people with disabilities, amongst the final year medical, midwifery and nursing students and to compare the three health departments on their students’ attitudes.Methods: A questionnaire-based electronic survey was directed to all medical, midwifery and nursing students registered at two big universities in Athens, Greece (n=190). The time frame was decided to encompass a month window (from 2nd May to 2nd June 2021).Results: The Nursing students in the study showed overall a better attitude towards disabled people. Our research mainly indicates the fact that in general, there is need to prioritize training in both theoretical and practical fields through alterations in all three university departments’ curricula.Conclusions: Undergraduates Health Students (of Nursing, Midwifery and Medicine) generally present a lack of awareness, familiarity and experience towards disabled people. Numerous reasons seemed to influence health professional’s attitudes to people with a disability including their age, gender, nationality, education, years of experience, general knowledge regarding a disability and the level and nature of their training. This research clearly illustrates the importance of improving how universities’ undergraduate curricula address disabilities in an effort to inspire upcoming health professionals.

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The relationship between empathy and altruistic motivations in nursing studies: A multi-method study

10.21203/rs.3.rs-59634/v2 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Linda Messineo ◽

Luciano Seta ◽

Mario Allegra

Keyword(s):

Nursing Education ◽

Nursing Students ◽

Health Professionals ◽

Linear Models ◽

Motivational Factors ◽

Care Process ◽

First Year ◽

Young Males ◽

Young Females ◽

Students Attitudes

Abstract Background. The efficient management of relational competences in healthcare professionals is crucial to ensure that a patient’s treatment and care process is conducted positively. Empathy is a major component of the relational skills expected of health professionals. Knowledge of undergraduate healthcare students’ empathic abilities is important for educators in designing specific and efficient educational programmes aimed at supporting or enhancing students’ empathic competences. In this study, we measured first-year undergraduate nursing students’ attitudes towards professional empathy in clinical encounters. The students’ motivations for entering nursing education were also evaluated. This study takes a multi-method approach based on the use of qualitative and quantitative tools to examine the association between students’ positive attitudes towards the value of empathy in health professionals and their prosocial and altruistic motivations in choosing to engage in nursing studies.Methods. A multi-method study was performed with 77 first-year nursing students. The Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE) – Health Professions Student Version was administered. Students’ motivations for choosing nursing studies were detected through an open question and thematically analysed. Using explorative and confirmative factor analyses, a dimension reduction was conducted to identify subjects with prosocial and altruistic motivations. Finally, linear models were tested to examine specific associations between motivation and empathy.Results. Seven distinct themes distinguishing internal and external motivational factors were identified through the thematic analysis of students’ answers regarding their choice of entering the nursing degree course. Female students gained higher scores on the empathy scale than their male counterparts. When students’ age was considered, this difference was shown only for younger students, with young females’ total scores being higher than those of young males. High empathy scores were positively associated with altruistic motivational factors. A negative correlation was found between external motivational factors and the scores of the Compassionate Care subscale of the JSE.Conclusions. Knowing the level of nursing students’ empathy and their motivational factors for entering nursing studies is important for educators in order to implement training paths that enhance students’ relational attitudes and skills and promote positive motivational aspects that are central to this profession.

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Using Popular Nursing Literature Critique to Help Nursing Students Explore Their Perceptions of Disability

International Journal of Whole Person Care ◽

10.26443/ijwpc.v1i1.51 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Charles Anyinam ◽

Sue Coffey

Keyword(s):

Nursing Education ◽

Nursing Students ◽

Healthcare Providers ◽

Disabled People ◽

Professional Students ◽

Undergraduate Nursing ◽

Perceptions Of Disability ◽

Nursing Literature ◽

Students Attitudes ◽

Teaching Learning

Objectives: Disabled people have a history of disadvantage, discrimination, and disempowerment that continues to present day. Despite strong critique and activism by disabled people, popular understandings of disability as necessarily tragic, medically based, and individualistic requiring ‘fixing’ persist among health professionals. Recent research demonstrates that health professional students often harbour negative attitudes that may directly affect their relationships with and care provided to disabled clients (Sabin & Akyol, 2010; Scullion, 1999). Further, personal accounts and research evidence suggests that the relationship between healthcare providers and disabled people is often unsatisfactory (Sabin & Akyol, 2010; Seccombe, 2007; Scullion, 1999).Methods: Nursing education has a responsibility to ensure that nursing practice with disabled people is enabling rather than disabling (Scullion, 1999a, 1999b, 2000; Sabin & Akyol, 2010). A key strategy is to imbed within curricula opportunities for students to engage in the processes of critical thinking towards and analysis of disability and the experiences of disabled people. This poster describes an approach to teaching-learning in which critique of ‘popular culture’ nursing literature is used to support student exploration of messaging about disability.Results and Conclusions: The purpose and description of the assignment, authors’ experiences, and outcomes for both teachers and learners will be presented. Application beyond nursing to other health professions will be described.ReferencesSabin, H. & Akyol, A. D. (2010). Evaluation of nursing and medical students' attitudes towards people with disabilities. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 19, 22712279.Scullion, P. A. (1999). Conceptualizing disability in nursing: Some evidence from students and their teachers. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 29, 648657.Scullion, P. A. (2000). Enabling disabled people: Responsibilities of nursing education. British Journal of Nursing, 9(15), 1010-1015.Seccombe, J. A. (2007). Attitudes towards disability in an undergraduate nursing curriculum: A literature review. Nurse Education Today, 27, 459465.

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Italian nursing students' attitudes towards care of the dying patient: a multi-center descriptive study

Nurse Education Today ◽

10.1016/j.nedt.2021.104991 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 104991

Author(s):

Chiara Mastroianni ◽

Anna Marchetti ◽

Daniela D’Angelo ◽

Marco Artico ◽

Diana Giannarelli ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Nursing Students ◽

Descriptive Study ◽

Students Attitudes ◽

Dying Patient ◽

Care Of The Dying

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The relationship between empathy and altruistic motivations in nursing studies: a multi-method study

BMC Nursing ◽

10.1186/s12912-021-00620-4 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Linda Messineo ◽

Luciano Seta ◽

Mario Allegra

Keyword(s):

Nursing Education ◽

Nursing Students ◽

Health Professionals ◽

Linear Models ◽

Principal Component ◽

Motivational Factors ◽

Care Process ◽

First Year ◽

Young Males ◽

Young Females

Abstract Background The efficient management of relational competences in healthcare professionals is crucial to ensuring that a patient’s treatment and care process is conducted positively. Empathy is a major component of the relational skills expected of health professionals. Knowledge of undergraduate healthcare students’ empathic abilities is important for educators in designing specific and efficient educational programmes aimed at supporting or enhancing such competences. In this study, we measured first-year undergraduate nursing students’ attitudes towards professional empathy in clinical encounters. The students’ motivations for entering nursing education were also evaluated. This study takes a multi-method approach based on the use of qualitative and quantitative tools to examine the association between students’ positive attitudes towards the value of empathy in health professionals and their prosocial and altruistic motivations in choosing to engage in nursing studies. Methods A multi-method study was performed with 77 first-year nursing students. The Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE) – Health Professions Student Version was administered. Students’ motivations for choosing nursing studies were detected through an open question and thematically analysed. Using explorative factor analysis and principal component analysis, a dimensional reduction was conducted to identify subjects with prosocial and altruistic motivations. Finally, linear models were tested to examine specific associations between motivation and empathy. Results Seven distinct themes distinguishing internal and external motivational factors were identified through a thematic analysis of students’ answers regarding their decision to enter a nursing degree course. Female students gained higher scores on the empathy scale than male ones. When students’ age was considered, this difference was only observed for younger students, with young females’ total scores being higher than young males'. High empathy scores were positively associated with altruistic motivational factors. A negative correlation was found between external motivational factors and the scores of the Compassionate Care subscale of the JSE. Conclusions Knowing the level of nursing students’ empathy and their motivational factors for entering nursing studies is important for educators to implement training paths that enhance students’ relational attitudes and skills and promote the positive motivational aspects that are central to this profession.

Download Full-text