A picture of a work of art as an empathy teaching strategy in nurse education complementary to theoretical knowledge.

A randomized study was performed to investigate whether a teaching intervention program using a reproduction of Edvard Munch's painting, "The Sick Girl," stimulated student nurses to engage in learning about empathy. A control group was used to control for effects of the visual art dialogues in the intervention group. The study was undertaken at a university college of health science in Sweden. Data were collected from student nurses (n = 144) during their first study year. The result showed a significant improvement in the visual art group compared with the matched control group. Students in the visual art group were more engaged in learning about empathy when measured with the Wheel Questionnaire parameters of structure, motivation, and emotional investment. The present study supported the idea that Edvard Munch's painting could be used in nurse education complementary to theoretical knowledge on empathy to stimulate student nurses to engage in empathy learning. Copyright 2003 Elsevier, Inc. All rights reserved.

RCT Entities:   Population Interventions Outcomes