The effect of disability empathy activity on the attitude of nursing students towards disabled people: a pilot study

Background: Nurses care for disabled people in society.Objectives: The aim of this experimental study was to investigate the effect of disability empathy activities on strengthening the positive attitudes of nursing students towards disabled people.Design: An experimental study. Pretest-Posttest control group arrangement was used.Methods: This research has been conducted with 116 nursing students (53 experimental and 63 control). The data were collected with Attitudes Towards Disabled Persons Scale (ATDP).Results: Before the experiment, there was no significant difference between ATDP scores of experimental and control groups (p>0.05). After the experiment, second ATDP scores of experimental group (66.8114.27) were found to be significantly higher than the scores of control group (59.02 +/- 11.71) (p=0.002). After six months, third ATDP scores of experimental group (63.58 +/- 13.46) were also found to be higher than the scores of control group (58.43 +/- 11.03) (p=0.025).Conclusions: Empathy activities applied to understand disabled people affected the attitudes of student nurses towards disabled people positively.