Correlation between levels for stress with level of empathy in undergraduate medical students

OBJECTIVE: To determine the correlation between levels of stress with level of empathy in all five years of undergraduate medical students of a private medical college in Pakistan. METHODS: This descriptive correlation study was conducted at Al Tibri Medical College, Karachi from 15(th) June to 14(th) November 2021. Of the 500 students in the medical school, 408 participants filled out the questionnaires through online Google Forms. The student’s version of the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE-S) estimated the self-reported student’s empathy levels. At the same time, Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) was utilized to assess the student’s levels of stress. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 22.0 and correlation between empathy and perceived stress was calculated by Pearson’s coefficient. A p-value <.05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS: Out of 408 participants, there were 217(53.2%) males, and 191(46.8%) females. The overall mean JSE-S score was 94.60±11.85, and the mean PSS score was 20.20 ±5.70. Empathy scores improved over the basic sciences years and then significantly decreased in the clinical years of medical college with a significant p-value of .019. The highest stress was present in third year medical students with a p-value of <.001. No statistically significant difference was present between empathy and stress levels (r = 0.04, p = .40). CONCLUSIONS: The study showed no statistically significant correlation between empathy and stress. Future research is needed to investigate other main factors for the decline in empathy among medical students.