Telephone nurses' perceived stress, self-efficacy and empathy in their work with frequent callers

Aim: To examine telephone nurses' perceived stress, self-efficacy and empathy in their work with answering calls from frequent callers. Design: The study is a quantitative questionnaire survey study with a comparative design. Methods: Telephone nurses (N = 199) answered a survey containing three instruments: Perceived Stress Scale, General Self-Efficacy Scale and Jefferson's Scale of Empathy. Correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis and analysis of variance were performed to test the research questions. Results: Significant negative correlations were found between stress involving calls from FCs and self-efficacy (r = -.238), and significant negative correlations between stress involving calls from frequent callers and empathy (r = -.185). It was further revealed that telephone nurses who had worked less than 30 years scored higher on Jefferson's Scale of empathy than those who had worked more than 30 years, F(1, 183) = 4.98, eta(2) = 0.027.