Association of Nursesʹ Self-Reported Empathy and Mu Suppression with Patientsʹ Satisfaction

Introduction: The aim of this study is to explore the association between mu suppression and self-reported empathy in nurses with patients’ satisfaction. Methods: For this correlational study, 30 male nurses, as well as 30 patients took care by these nurses during the week before data gathering, were selected via accessible and random sampling method, respectively. The tools included Jeffersonʹs Scale of Empathy-health professionals, and patient’s satisfaction scale of La Monica-Oberst. Activation of Mirror Neurons System (MNS) was investigated by mu suppression. For this purpose, electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded in three phases: 1) Watching the video of a non-moving hand, 2) Watching the video of a hand being open and closed, and 3) Opening and closing one-selfʹs hand. EEG recordings were analyzed using Matlab R 2014a software. Data were analyzed by Pearsonʹs correlation coefficients and multiple regression analyses. Results: There was no significant correlation between mu suppression in nurses with nursesʹ self-reported empathy and patientsʹ satisfaction, however, a significant correlation was found between nursesʹ self-reported empathy and patientsʹ satisfaction. Regression analysis outcomes showed that nursesʹ self-reported empathy could predict 18.5% (nearly one fifth) of patientsʹ satisfaction variance while mu suppression did not forecast patientsʹ satisfaction significantly.Conclusion: These findings suggested that mu rhythm was a good biomarker neither for nursesʹ self-reported empathy nor for patientsʹ satisfaction. In addition, it was manifested that patientsʹ satisfaction, at least partly, depended on skills that nurses could learn, since showing empathy is highly learnable.