Comparison of empathy score among medical students in both basic and clinical levels

Introduction: Empathy refers to a personality character that has a great role in communication with others. Thus, proper evaluation and education of empathy in medical students is important for medical education. Because previous studies had suggested that physician's empathy may reduce with clinical trainings, in this study we decided to measure the empathy score among medical students. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study conducted on medical students in the first to seventh years of their studies at Shiraz medical school (south of Iran) in 2010. We designed new Iranian version questionnaire of the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy. Sample size was 260 students and the results were analyzed in SPSS, version 11.5 (statistical tests such as descriptive methods, t-test, and ANOVA) and p<005 was considered as the significant level. Results: The empathy score decreased with increase in the students’ age (p=0.001) and educational level (p=0.030). The overall rate of empathy score in basic science level (65.5±0.84) was more than that in the clinical level (55.5±1.78). The lowest empathy score was seen in the seventh year students (55.51) and the highest was in the first year students (65.50). Female students had higher mean empathy score (65.53) while it was 59.02 in the male students. Conclusion: In general, medical students in Shiraz University of Medical Sciences had low empathy level and this may be a cause for concern; as such we suggest a possible inclusion of courses on empathy in the curriculum.