Empathic perceptions of nursing students: self-reported and actual ability.

Clearly, one of the goals of nursing education is to enhance the empathic functioning of nursing students. In this study we examined one major component of empathic functioning--accuracy of empathic perceptions--in both undergraduate (n = 66) and graduate nursing students (n = 50) We predicted that actual ability (Kagan's Affective Sensitivity Scale) and self-perceived ability would vary as a positive function of educational level. The results supported the first prediction, even when the effects of the subjects' age and amount of prior nursing experience were controlled.

Stress, social support, and the transition to fatherhood.

Over the past ten years, nurses have shown increasing interest in understanding and assisting men in their transition to fatherhood. Inadequate data and lack of a framework for interpreting diverse studies have hindered the development of appropriate intervention strategies. In this article, a paradigm from the field of stress research is adapted to the transition to fatherhood.

Nursing care for the emerging family: promoting paternal behavior.

In the last decade, nursing care related to childbirth has expanded from a narrow emphasis on the physical health needs of the mother and infant to a broader focus on more family-related, socioemotional needs. One prominent feature of this family-centered approach is the recent movement toward designing services to promote the formation of the mother-infant attachment bond. It is argued in this paper, however, that to achieve a truly family-centered practice, nursing must make a comparable commitment to understanding and meeting the needs of the father in the emerging family.

Affective discrimination of stimuli that cannot be recognized.

Animal and human subjects readily develop strong preferences for objects that have become familiar through repeated exposures. Experimental evidence is presented that these preferences can develop even when the exposures are so degraded that recognition is precluded.