Evaluating empathy level amongst the dental students using jefferson scale of physician empathy- health professional students

BACKGROUND

Empathy is described as one's ability to perceive and apprehend another person's feelings, situation, emotions, and problems as their own. Empathetic behavior increases patients' satisfaction, reduces discomfort, and helps with patient's satisfaction.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the psychometric properties of the Jefferson Empathy Scale and compare the measure of invariance within genders and amongst the public and private sector dental students.

METHOD

This cross-sectional study utilized JSE-HPS version for research purpose. An exploratory factor analysis was performed to detect underlying factors. Reliability of the study tool was evaluated using Cronbach alpha test. Mann Whitney U test was used to compare the differences in scores between genders and among public and private university students while Student's t analysis compared the scores according to different domains. The level of significance was ≤ 0.05.

RESULTS

Females demonstrated higher empathy levels (88.52 ± 14.19) along with private institute students (88.46 ± 13.98). Perspective taking and compassionate care domain was also scored highest by the females (31.73 ± 6.49 & 29.31 ± 6.22) and among second year students (33.30 ± 7.11 & 30.50 ± 7.16). PCA analysis extracted 4 factors namely (i) Health-care-provider's sense of humor contributed to improved outcome (ii) Health-care provider's understanding of patients' feelings and of their families influences treatment outcomes (iii) Understanding body language is as important as verbal communication and (iv) Patients feel better when their feelings are understood, which accounted for the 59.51% of the total variance.

CONCLUSION

The findings revealed that students from private institute and females demonstrated higher empathy score. Moreover, the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE) was found to be a reliable and validated tool for assessment of empathy in our sample population.

Appraisal of empathy among dental interns and postgraduate students at King Abdulaziz University: A cross-sectional study

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES

Empathetic communication of dentists with their patients is a primary characteristic of their health care. This study aims to evaluate dental students' empathy levels during the transitional period of internship and postgraduate studies of different specialties at one of the oldest dental schools in Saudi Arabia and explore how this empathy was affected by gender, age, and study duration.

METHODS

In this study, the self-reported empathy level among the participants was assessed using the Jefferson scale of empathy-student version (JSE-HPS). This survey includes a 20-question Likert scale formulated to measure clinical empathy in health care professionals. The JSE-HPS was distributed to all registered dental interns and postgraduate students during the academic year 2019-20 in King Abdulaziz University Faculty of Dentistry (KAUFD), Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

RESULTS

Mean total score of empathy of the participants was (101.07 ± 14.8) with a response rate of 89%. A statistically significant higher empathy score appeared among dental postgraduate students in general (p = 0.04) and specifically among the females (p = 0.04) and those with postgraduate programs for more than four years, (p = 0.02). Dental postgraduate students scored significantly higher in the parameters of standing in patients' shoes (p = 0.02).

CONCLUSION

Gender, academic level, and duration of postgraduates' studies influenced empathy more than the age of the dental graduates in KAUFD. Our recommendation is to integrate empathy into the dental curriculum emphasizing interactive communication skills and early patient contact.

Variabilidad empática en estudiantes de odontología. Consecuencias aún no entendidas en América Latina

Introducción. La empatía es un atributo que permite a los odontólogos establecer una relación intersubjetiva con sus pacientes, lo que contribuye a un tratamiento exitoso, entre otros beneficios. Objetivo. Determinar si hay variabilidad en los niveles de empatía entre dos poblaciones de estudiantes de odontología y describir teóricamente las implicaciones generales de esta variabilidad en estrategias de intervención. Materiales y métodos. Estudio exploratorio transversal. La población de estudio consistió de estudiantes de odontología de 1er a 5to año de la Universidad Santiago de Cali, Colombia (n=610; N=647) y la Universidad San Sebastián, Chile (n=535; N=800). En ambos grupos, la empatía se midió con la Escala de Empatía de Jefferson (Versión S). Para el análisis de los datos se utilizó estadística descriptiva (media y desviación estándar). La consistencia interna de los datos se estimó mediante el alfa de Cronbach y el coeficiente de correlación intraclase. Se realizó un análisis de varianza factorial: tres factores estudiados: Universidad (U), Curso (C) y Sexo (S). El nivel de significancia estadística utilizado fue de α≤ 0.05 y β≤ 0.20. Resultados. Se observaron diferencias en el nivel de empatía y algunas de sus tres dimensiones entre los estudiantes de ambas universidades y entre los cursos (1er-5to año). No se observaron diferencias entre sexos. Conclusiones. Existe variabilidad en los niveles de empatía entre los estudiantes de ambas universidades. Para aumentar los niveles de empatía en esta población en Latinoamérica se requiere la implementación de estrategias específicas de intervención empática en cada programa de odontología ofrecido en la región.