Objective: As a developable ability,empathy is significantly associated with patient-centered care.The authors intended to evaluate the effect of Virtual Dementia Tour (VDT) upon nursing students’ empathy level and propose practical rationales for optimizing future dementia care.Methods: A total of 45 second-year undergraduate nursing students were organized to watch a theme movie entitled Still Alice and participate in an 8-min VDT.Jefferson Scale of Empathy-Health Professional Students (JSE-HPS) was employed for evaluating the empathy level of nursing students.After VDT,all nursing students participated in a structured interview.Descriptive statistics and paired t-tests were performed using SPSS 24.0.Results: Their empathy levels demonstrated significant overall improvements (106.69 ± 9.49 vs 115.51 ± 10.16,P ＜ 0.01).During the course of VDT,nursing students experienced varying levels of anxiety and frustration.All of them were satisfied with the program since they had gained a deeper understanding of demented patients and the program could change their attitudes toward demented elders.Conclusion: Watching a specially selected movie and participating in VDT may be an effective method for enhancing empathy and caring during nursing student education.