Despite their critical role in child care, emergency department (ED) nurses’ empathy and their attachment style toward children have not been thoroughly studied.
This research is conducted to explore the reciprocal dynamic relationship between nurses’ empathetical orientation and their level of attachment style in the pediatric emergency departments.
A descriptive cross-sectional survey was conducted across 132 pediatric emergency nurses from three pediatric hospitals in 2024. The study utilized a tool comprised socio-demographic characteristics of pediatric emergency nurses, the Jefferson Scale of Empathy, and Adult Attachment Scale. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences, version 26 was used to examine the associations among the measured variables in the study.
The study results show that the mean of empathetical orientation of nurses in the pediatric emergency departments was at a moderate level with a total mean score of
An empathetical orientation is independently significantly predicted of attachment style of pediatric emergency nurses. The findings could be the basis for emergency nurses to expand their roles in enhancing children health outcomes to improve their own empathy recognition abilities for adapting attachment style.
