Empathy in Nursing Students From the Metropolitana University of Barranquilla (Colombia)

Abstract

Objective: to evaluate the Empathic Orientation in Nursing students of the Universidad Metropolitana of Barranquilla (Colombia). Method: a descriptive, exploratory and transversal study in which the Jefferson Medical Empathy Scale in an anonymous and confidential manner was applied to 489 students from the first to fourth undergraduate year of the Nursing Program of the Universidad Metropolitana (Barranquilla, Colombia); the corresponding ethical and methodological rigor was kept. Results: the ANOVA results were not significant in the Academic Year factor and in the interaction (p=0.261), but significant by Gender. It was observed that behavior was different in both genders. The masculine gender tends to descend between the first and third undergraduate year and female gender also descends between first and second undergraduate year to later reach the average levels of empathy of the male gender. Conclusion: the results obtained show that the means of the variable studied do not show a great difference between the different undergraduate courses, nevertheless, a slight increase in the fourth undergraduate year is observed. There were significant differences between genders, the scores observed in men students were higher than those obtained from women students.

Psychometric properties of the Jefferson Empathy Scale in four nursing student faculties

“…The empathic diagnoses should strongly relate to pedagogical actions, curricula modification, and the introduction of active teachinglearning processes, among many other aspects. All of these strategies need to be applied simultaneously and must function alongside and in accordance with empathic diagnoses (4,(35)(36)(37) , as various authors have long held (1,4,25) .…”

Empathy in Professors and Students of a School of Dentistry in the Caribbean

“…However, complexity of empathy as an attribute poses a problem [11,13,14], implying that the introduction of empathy into student training processes requires time and preparation and is the result of a planned strategy and dynamic action and is, in fact, influenced by several factors [6,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22], among others, the example set by professors [2]. This difficulty is a common characteristic for all Health Science students [6,[15][16][17][19][20][21][22][23].…”

“…However, complexity of empathy as an attribute poses a problem [11,13,14], implying that the introduction of empathy into student training processes requires time and preparation and is the result of a planned strategy and dynamic action and is, in fact, influenced by several factors [6,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22], among others, the example set by professors [2]. This difficulty is a common characteristic for all Health Science students [6,[15][16][17][19][20][21][22][23]. In this context, the objective of this paper is to estimate empathy levels in students and professors from basic and preclinical areas, as well as from the clinical area of a Dentistry School in the Dominican Republic, and to compare the empathy behavior of students and professors.…”

Psychometry and estimation of cutoff points of Jefferson Scale of empathy in dental students

“…In Latin America, empathy has been examined in students of different careers. One of the most commonly used instruments is the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (version S)(JSPE‐S) for medical students, adapted for other health careers, and in this case dental students 3,4–11 . Its psychometric characteristics have been exhaustively studied and are comprised of 3 components or dimensions: perspective adoption (PA), compassionate care (CC), and “walking in patient's shoes”(WIPS) 9,12–19 .…”

“…One of the most commonly used instruments is the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (version S)(JSPE‐S) for medical students, adapted for other health careers, and in this case dental students 3,4–11 . Its psychometric characteristics have been exhaustively studied and are comprised of 3 components or dimensions: perspective adoption (PA), compassionate care (CC), and “walking in patient's shoes”(WIPS) 9,12–19 . This scale is characterized by stability across groups of medical students (supports construct validity), acceptable reliability (alpha greater than 0.80), convergent validity confirmed by significant correlation coefficients between JSPE scores, and conceptual measures of compassion: validity discriminant due to the lack of significant association with irrelevant conceptual measures such as self‐protection 19–20 .…”