Evidence-Based Practice Approach on Clinical Empathy Skills Among Health Professionals: A Systematic Review Protocol

Introduction: Effective educational programs promote and strengthen nursing students’ empathetic skills, contributing to health professionals’ pleasure and emotions of personal accomplishment by offering a sense of excellent personal well-being, quality therapeutic management, and clinical expertise. Objectives: This review will synthesize the available evidence on the effectiveness of clinical empathy in general practice and clinical empathy skill training among health professionals. Review questions were structured using the PICOT framework. Inclusion criteria: We will include articles that detail original empirical studies and systematic reviews related to empathy skills among health professionals and the effect of empathy training on clinical empathy skills. Methods: The databases include the National Library of Medicine, SCOPUS, CENTRAL, MEDLINE, PubMed, EMBASE, and EBSCO. The key methods for facilitating the review will be print and electronic resources. Major medical subject heading (mesh) terms in titles and abstracts will be used in the search. To establish existing literature on the empathy training program, the search will contain the terms “empathy,” “clinical empathy,” and “empathy training” in all fields of the databases. The search strategy will commence from 2023 onward with no language restrictions. A team of independent reviewers will screen the retrieved titles, abstracts, and full-text reports and check the data quality using the John Hopkins EBP model and the literature will be systematically reviewed by following PRISMA Guidelines.