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Brett Williams,1 Ted Brown,2 Lisa McKenna,3 Malcolm J Boyle,1 Claire Palermo,4 Debra Nestel,5 Richard Brightwell,6 Louise McCall,7 Verity Russo11Department of Community Emergency Health and Paramedic Practice, 2Department of Occupational Therapy, 3School of Nursing and Midwifery, 4Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, 5School of Rural Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, 6School of Medical Sciences, Edith Cowan University, Perth, WA, 7Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, AustraliaBackground: Empathy is paramount in the health care setting, optimizing communication and rapport with patients. Recent empirical evidence suggests that empathy is associated with improved clinical outcomes. Therefore, given the importance of empathy in the health care setting, gaining a better understanding of students' attitudes and self-reported empathy is important. The objective of this study was to examine self-reported empathy levels of students enrolled in different health disciplines from two large Australian universities.Materials and methods: A total of 1,111 students from two different universities enrolled in eight different health professions were administered the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy – Health Profession Students version, a 20-item 7-point Likert scale questionnaire to evaluate self-reported empathy levels.Results: A total of 1,111 students participated in this study. The majority of participants were from Monash University (n=771), with 340 students from Edith Cowan University. No statistically significant differences were found between universities: Monash University (mean 110.1, standard deviation [SD] 11.8); Edith Cowan University (mean 109.2, SD 13.3, P=0.306). The mean female empathy score (mean 110.8, SD 11.7) was significantly higher than the mean male score (mean 105.3, SD 13.5; P |
