Empathy ability of nursing students: A systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Empathy is an ability that nursing students need in clinical practice, there is no available data to assess nursing students’ empathy ability level . The main purpose of this study is to synthesize the evidence relating to the empathy ability in nursing students to systematically evaluate the empathy ability level among nursing students. METHODS: Adhering to the preferred reporting items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses guidelines, we searched PubMed, Cochrane, Web of Science, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Wiley Library, Embase, CNKI, Wanfang, and China biomedical literature service system ten databases to collect cross-sectional studies on nursing students’ empathy ability. Two researchers independently screened the literature, extracted the data, and evaluated the risk of bias in the included studies. RESULTS: A total of 19 cross-sectional studies were included. The sample comprised 5407 nursing students. Meta-analysis showed that females have a higher empathy ability than males, and the empathy ability of rural students is higher than that of provincial students. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that the empathy ability among nursing students worldwide is higher, but there needs further improvement. This result makes nursing educators pay more attention to the cultivation of the nursing students’ empathy ability; improving the empathy level is beneficial in improving the standards of health care and patients’ quality of life.