Empathy training as the major thrust of a staff development program

The purpose of the study was to develop a human-relations-modeled staff development program and obtain an objective measure of the level of empathy of registered nurses who practiced in an acute- and chronic-care hospital. The short-term human-relations-modeled staff development program was designed specifically to assist nurses who scored low in empathy to increase their abilities to perceive and respond with greater empathy. The study indicated that all nurses tested possessed an extremely low level of empathy, that the staff development program significantly raised their levels of empathy, but that more training was needed to enable all or the majority of subjects to reach at least the minimal facilitative level necessary to help another person successfully.