Factors associated with the level of empathy towards the patient in medical students, Peru, 2018

• Main Authors: Fred Atahuaman-Arroyo (Author), David Mauro Ramirez-Espinoza (Author), Edinho Segama-Fabian (Author), Bernardo Dámaso-Mata (Author), Vicky Panduro-Correa (Author), Kovy Arteaga-Livias (Author)
• Format: Book
• Published: Universidad de Ciencias Médicas de La Habana, 2020-05-01T00:00:00Z.
• Subjects: article
• Online Access: Connect to this object online.
• Notes: 1729-519X
• Keywords: empatía; relaciones médico-paciente, empatía médica funcionamiento familiar.; Medicine (General); R5-920; Public aspects of medicine; RA1-1270
• Source: Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas, Vol 19, Iss 2, Pp e2673-e2673 (2020)

<p><strong>Introduction:</strong> Empathy is the adequate understanding towards the patient; it is considered the central axis of the doctor-patient relationship and is a vital component for high-quality health care.</p><p><strong>Objective:</strong> To determine the levels of empathy towards the patient and their association with family functionality, stress, academic performance and sociodemographic and academic factors of medical students.</p><p><strong>Material and Methods:</strong> An observational, descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted. The study population included 130 medical students (between 3rd-year and 6-th year) who fulfilled the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The independent variables were family functionality, stress and academic performance. A questionnaire and the Jefferson Scale of Empathy Version S were applied. For the analysis, the Shapiro-Wilk test was used for testing the assumption of normality, the Student t Test and Anova test were used to establish the relationship between variables. Statistical significance of p <0.05 was considered.</p><p><strong>Results:</strong> The average global empathy was 106.08 ± 18.29 points. Statistically significant differences were found between global empathy and sex (p = 0.03), year of studies (p = 0.00), and family functionality (p = 0.04).</p><p><strong>Conclusions:</strong> The level of family functioning is associated with empathy. Moreover, it was also found that women were more empathic than men and higher academic years were associated with a lower level of empathy towards the patient.</p>