Efecto de un curso de relación de ayuda sobre la elección de respuesta espontánea e identificación de respuesta empática en alumnos de enfermería

objective: to determine spontaneous response tendency in emotionally conflictive simulated situations by nursery students before and after attending a counseling subject. method: pretest-posttest cuasiexperimental study with a group of 78 nursing students. they were applied a spontaneous response choice test before and after studying a subject on counseling. there were 50 participants that answered the pre-test and 75 the post-test. the answer choice out of 6 posibilities was evaluated. t test was performed for related samples and for independent samples. chi square test to observe response distribution; 95% confidence interval. results: previous to studying this subject, students spontaneously selected empathetic response in 9% of the cases while after the end of the study in 43% occasions. the initial 33% of support-consolation responses decreased to 10%; the 30% problem-solving responses decreased to 19% and the 18% evaluation or moral judgement responses decreased to 11%; the 8% of initial investigation responses increased to 12%; differences between averages pre and post-test were statistically significant. conclusions: results point to counseling training utility as a learning method for empathetic response.