Nursing student as patient: experiential learning in a hospital simulation to improve empathy of nursing students

BACKGROUND: Empathy is an important factor in the relation nurse-patient. To develop empathy in bachelor nursing students is a challenge in nursing education. There are several small experiential learning methods that develop empathy in nursing students, although not in a hospital simulation. By experiencing the role of a patient, nursing students would learn important aspects of empathy. AIM: This research will explore what nursing students learn about empathy in the relation nurse-patient, while they lie in bed as a patient seeing the nurse from another perspective. METHODOLOGICAL DESIGN: Qualitative descriptive study on 75 reflections of bachelor nursing students. RESULTS: Students experienced the need for empathy and were confronted with the patient's experiential world, being dependent, enduring hospital life and needing attention from the nurse. CONCLUSION: The change in perspective in the hospital simulation gives nursing students valuable insights in the importance of empathy in the relation patient-nurse. Four themes were identified: endurance, silent scream for attention, scary dependency and confrontation with the role of patient. Students learned about the possibilities and difficulties of empathy in different stages of the simulation. A hospital simulation is a useful and practical method to teach students empathy from the patients' perspective, on condition that there is a solid preparation for experiential learning.