Relationships Between Nurses’ Empathy and Adult Attachment, Self-Esteem, and Communication Self-Efficacy

Purpose: This study was conducted to investigate adult attachment, self-esteem, communication self-efficacy, and empathy in nurses and identify factors affecting empathy. Methods: The data were collected from 100 nurses at K,D University Hospital in D city, K Province. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 20.0 to obtain means and standard deviations and perform frequency analysis, t tests, and a one-way ANOVA. Pearson's correlation coefficient and Stepwise regression analysis were performed to identify factors affecting empathy. Result: The average scores for adult attachment, self-esteem, and communication self-efficacy were 118.05, 28.60, and 142.28, respectively. As subareas of adult attachment, average scores for anxious and avoidance attachment were 52.31 and 65.74, respectively. The average empathy score was 103.76. Empathy was negatively correlated with avoidance attachment (r = -.26, p = .008) and positively correlated with communication self-efficacy (r = .28, p = .004). Anxiety attachment, avoidance attachment, and communication selfefficacy explained 13.1% of the variance in empathy. Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that interventions focusing on anxious attachment, avoidance attachment, and communication efficacy could increase empathy in nurses.