MENTAL HEALTH NURSES' IMAGINATION, POWER, AND EMPATHY: A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY USING ROGERIAN NURSING SCIENCE.
Contributors: New York University.
Published: 1995
Number of pages: 231
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Health Sciences, Mental Health.; Psychology, Clinical.; Psychology, Industrial.
Description: The researcher developed a perspective on empathy derived from Rogers' (1970, 1994) Science of Unitary Human Beings. Building on Barrett's (1983) Rogerian theory of power as knowing participation in change, the researcher proposed that empathy and power would change relative to each other and relative to the creative manifestation of human imagination. Using a descriptive correlational design, three hypotheses predicting that empathy, power, and imagination would each be related positively to one another were tested.

Female, Master's prepared nurses constituted the national sample (N = 169) randomly selected from the mailing list of the American Nurses' Association Council on Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing. There was a 76% response rate to the questionnaire designed according to Dillman's Total Design Method using two follow-up mailings. The survey instruments included Huba et al.'s (1982) Short Imaginal Processes Inventory (SIPI), Barrett's (1986) Power as Knowing Participation in Change Test (PKPCT), La Monica's (1982) Empathy Construct Rating Scale (ECRS), and a Personal Data Inventory.

The three hypotheses were fully supported at the.001 significance level. Empathy was positively related to imagination (r = 2.67) and to power (r =.5155). Imagination was positively related to power (r =.2953). Alpha reliability was.89 for the SIPI,.96 for the PKPCT, and.95 for the ECRS.

Supplementary findings included data based on two additional subscales of the SIPI and four scales of the PKPCT. There were significant differences in means for several study variables according to marital status, number of children, use of imagery or meditation, being certified, practice setting, number of years in personal psychotherapy, and having a personal physical illness or a loved one who experienced mental illness. Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the proportion of variability in the ECRS scores. Power accounted for 28% of the unique variance in empathy. When the guilt-fear of failure imagination scale of the SIPI was added to the equation, 36% of the variance in empathy was explained.

The findings of this study have implications for mental health nursing practice. Motivation for entering this specialty practice and frequent dreams of the participants are reported. There is beginning support for conceptualizing empathy within Rogers' nursing modal. Recommendations are made for further study of the concepts within the Rogerian model.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-11, Section: B, page: 6033.

Thesis (PH.D.)--NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, 1995.

School code: 0146.