Preparation and validation of a Brazilian Clinical Empathy Scale (EBEC): pilot test

Abstract

Introduction: Empathy, which is a crucial element of humanism, has been the subject of increasing interest in medical education. In the context of the healthcare professions, empathy in patient care is an attribute that involves understanding the patient’s experiences, pain, suffering, and concerns combined with the ability to communicate that understanding and an intention to help. Despite the development of practices that encourage empathy in medical students, a challenge in academic life is measuring this ability. Objective: To develop and validate a Brazilian scale of empathy in the context of clinical care. Method: Pilot study of construction and validation of a psychometric scale, carried out in five stages: (1) Definition of the dimensions of the construct based on a literature review; (2) Items submitted to theoretical analysis with judges specialized in the subject, aiming to identify the pertinence of the item within the construct; (3) carrying out a pre-test with the target population to assess the understanding of the items (4) validation of the scale with application to 207 Brazilian medical students (5) application of statistical tests that help in the validation of the scale. Result: At the end of the study, the created Empathy Scale contained 21 items, with Likert scale responses, distributed in two factors: empathic understanding and empathic action, which presented good proposed reliability (>0.842) and good internal consistency (latent H >0.879 and observed H >0.864) with a total explained variance of 44.95%. Conclusion: The application of the clinical empathy scale, in medical students, resulted in an instrument that met the criteria of semantic and cultural adequacy and revealed preliminary evidence of validity.