Effects of Nursing Students’ Disabled Experience Program on Disability Perception, Empathic Ability and Disability Acceptance Attitude

Objectives This study aimed to determine the effects of a disability experience program on nursing students’ disability perception, empathic ability, and disability acceptance attitude. Methods This study is a quasi-experimental study with a single-group pretest/posttest design. For this, nursing students in the nursing department of a university located in Chungnam were randomly selected. Data collected were analyzed using the SPSS WIN 26.0 program by descriptive statistics, paired t-test, independent samples t-test, ANOVA, Pearson’s correlation coefficients. Results After the disabled experience program, nursing students' disability perception(t=-4.92. p=.000), empathic ability(t=3.01. p=.004), and disability acceptance attitude(t=-5.41. p=.000) improved and there was a statistically significant difference. Among the general characteristics, nursing students who did not prefer providing nursing for people with disabilities showed an increase in disability perception after participating in the disabled experience program(t=2.07, p=.049). Additionally, disability perception and disability acceptance attitude showed a strong positive correlation(r=.82, p=.000). Conclusions This study confirmed that the disabled experience program was effective in improving nursing students' disability perception, empathic ability and disability acceptance attitude. Future research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of the disabled experience program through experimental studies involving multiple universities with a control group.