Empathy of dental students towards children after behaviour guidance lectures and clinical experience

Abstract

IntroductionThe empathetic behaviour of dentists is essential for perfect patient care. Because the behaviour of child patients in a dental clinic differs from that exhibited by the adults, knowing of empathy of dental students towards the child in the dental clinic is an important concern.MethodsWe distributed a modified form of the Health Professions Student version (HPS‐version) of the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE) to dental students in two rounds: (R1) before and (R2) after introducing behaviour guidance subcourse and exposure to 3 clinical experiences with children to measure changes in empathy of dental students towards child patients. The modifications include replacing the “patient” words with “child patients” and translation into Arabic. We checked the internal consistency of the modified form of HPS‐version by Cronbach's coefficient alpha test. The significance level was set at 0.05 for all statistical analyses.ResultsOut of eighty‐one, sixty‐five dental students completed the survey and attended a behaviour guidance course and three clinical sessions. The questionnaire showed accepted reliability. There was a significant decrease in the empathy of dental students in R2 than R1 (P < .05). The level of empathy for males was less than female students in both rounds (P < .05).ConclusionsThe clinical interaction of children by dental students inhibits their empathy towards child patients, and a specific training course is needed to improve dental students’ empathy towards children since learning behaviour guidance may not sufficient.

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“…The TEQ exhibited good internal consistency (α = 0.87) and high test-retest reliability (0.79 and 0.73, respectively). The items were regarding emotional contagion (1,4), emotional assessment (2,7,10,12,15), empathetic response (13), emotion comprehension (8), sympathetic physiological arousal (3,6,9,11), and altruism (5,14,16). Empathy was assessed with a five point Likert scale ranging from "never" to "always".…”

“…9 Authors suggest that such problems can be overcome by lifelong and continuous education of health care professionals as well as by incorporating better training programs with greater emphasis on behavioral sciences and ethics. 11,12 While some authors are also of the view that empathy decline is an unavoidable psychological effect. 13 The concern was captioned by one of the authors as: "How can we stop the rot?"…”

The optimal application of empathy interventions to reduce antisocial behaviour and crime: a review of the literature

“…Various mindfulness-based training programmes have successfully increased empathy levels (Gur & Yilmaz, 2020;Winning & Boag, 2015). Further, simulated practice exercises are found to be effective to develop empathy in medical contexts (Bearman et al, 2015), whereas other formats such as behavioural guidance teaching where students are taught about the behaviour of their patients are unsuccessful (Souror et al, 2020). To enhance engagement in simulations, virtual reality (VR) technology is often adopted and, by virtue of VR's immersive nature, allows individuals to engage in perspective-taking more readily (Schutte & Stilinovic, 2017).…”

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“…10 Recognising the significance of this dramatic drop in empathy, healthcare curricula seek to impart empathy as a core attribute for the next generation of healthcare professionals. 16 Whilst there is no agreed format with which to best foster empathy, there are three imperative factors that are believed to constitute empathy: "perspective-taking," "compassionate care" and "walking in the patients' shoes" and these account for the development of a metacognitive side when interacting with patients. 17 There are examples of good practice with various approaches, ranging from the use of an E.M.P.A.T.H.Y tool to improve doctorpatient communication, 18 through to the use of video clips about patient encounters to achieve sustainable increases in empathy score amongst medical students.…”

“…For dental students, it has been suggested that this decline could be attributed to a focus on the more technical demands of intensive training and the curriculum at dental schools being more procedurally focused rather than patient‐centred 10 . Recognising the significance of this dramatic drop in empathy, healthcare curricula seek to impart empathy as a core attribute for the next generation of healthcare professionals 16 . Whilst there is no agreed format with which to best foster empathy, there are three imperative factors that are believed to constitute empathy: “perspective‐taking,” “compassionate care” and “walking in the patients’ shoes” and these account for the development of a metacognitive side when interacting with patients 17 …”