Empathy Levels of Dental Faculty and Students: A Survey Study at an Academic Dental Institution in Chile

Abstract

A successful health care provider may be described as a clinician capable of establishing a comprehensive diagnosis including identifying related risk factors. However, an equally important quality a clinician should possess is the ability to understand the experiences and feelings of others to allow better communication for better outcomes. It is likely that faculty empathy levels influence students' ability to demonstrate this attribute. The aim of this study was to assess the levels of empathy of dental faculty members relative to dental students at the Universidad San Sebastian in Chile. Using a cross‐sectional design of survey‐collected data collected with the Jefferson Scale of Empathy, the authors compared the perceptions of the dental faculty involved in teaching fourth‐ and fifth‐year dental students (n=116) to the perceptions of basic and preclinical students (n=346) and clinical students (n=189). The data were collected in 2016‐17. The results showed that the mean faculty scores were higher than that of the students in compassionate care (90.1%) and perspective adoption (89.7%); however, for putting oneself in the other's shoes, the faculty had a lower score (57.8%) than the clinical students (58.2%). Future investigations are needed to understand the impact of faculty empathy scores on students and whether pedagogical interventions can increase empathy scores.

The influence of clinical training level on the empathy levels of undergraduate and postgraduate dental students

“…Besides, Ameh et al 7 were unable to detect a significant difference in empathy between preclinical and clinical years in dental school. Our results were supported by findings of Carvajal et al 18 , who reported that clinical education improves the empathy levels of students with increased knowledge and patient interaction when compared to preclinical classes. We considered that the intention to serve patients might have created a high responsibility and motivation for the fourth-grade students.…”

“…Likewise, more emphasis should be given to the role of clinical supervisors as empathetic models for students. 13 Carvajal et al 18 reported that faculty staff had higher levels of empathy when compared to students and raised a question whether their empathic behaviors would enhance the empathy levels of students. For this reason, postgraduate students were included to the present cohort, as their empathic behaviors could be important to understand the transition from studentship to professional academic life.…”

Measuring Empathy among Dental Students and Interns: A Cross-Sectional Study from Dammam, Saudi Arabia

“…In the studies of medical students, the empathy score in students was significantly associated with faculty's rating of clinical competence and communication scores of students [ 27 , 30 ]. Hence, there is a greater emphasis on empathy among dental students which is evident from the recent surge in the literature on dental education [ 18 – 20 , 25 , 31 ]. In our study, a vast majority of participants believed in the importance of empathy in effective communication with patients and improved provider-patient relationship.…”

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

“…As a consequence, a single “significant” change could be interpreted as a success, even though that change may not be that successful. Given that the concept of empathy is complex, the construction of cutoff points becomes important as a quantitative structure that makes it possible to quantify the magnitude of change in these levels and, furthermore, to have certain points of reference to credit the real meaning and true impact of an intervention to raise empathy levels 3,6,8,10,35–37 …”