The Empathy Of Medical Students And Its Related Factors

Objective:Empathy is an important part of the physician humanities and also an important part of professionalism. To investigate the characteristics of medical students’empathy and to explore the correlation of empathy with personality and self-esteem, and to provide evidence for empathic training.Methods:A total of564medical students were investigated by using the Jefferson Scale of Empathy-Health professionals(JSE-HP), the Interpersonal Reactive Index(IRI-C), the Neuroticism Extraversion Openness Personality Inventory (NEO-PI) and the Self-esteem Scale(SES).SPSS17.0was applied to analyze the data. Internal reliability analysis was used to identify the reliability of each questionnaire; Descriptive analysis, Independent-Samples Test and One-Way ANOVA were applied to investigate the characteristics of medical students’empathy; Pearson correlation analysis was adopted to analyze the relations between empathy and each factor; Stepwise regression analysis was used to identify the factors which affect medical students’empathy.Results:①The Cronbach a of each questionnaire and dimensions in each questionnaire was between0.608-0.857, the scales had good reliability.②The total score of JSE-HP was32-138, The total score of IRI-C was31-95, It’s showed that medical students’empathy was slightly higher than middle level.③The empathy of different gender, grade, and professional satisfaction has statistical significant (P<0.05, P<0.01).④The total score of JSE-HP was positively correlated with dimensions of outward, enlightened, easygoing and responsibility (p<0.01).⑤Stepwise regression analysis showed that easygoing, enlightened, emotional stability, professional satisfaction were the main predictors, which can explain16.4%of the total variance of empathy.Conclusion:①Medical students’empathy is higher than middle level.②Gender and whether the one-child medical empathy has no difference, the high degree of professional satisfaction and medical students studied psychology courses with high levels of empathy..③The level of empathy is positively correlated with the general level of empathy、personality dimensions and self-esteem negatively correlated.④ Medical students’personality dimensions and professional satisfaction can predict the level o empathy effectively.