Rising to the challenge: cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric evaluation of the adapted German version of the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy for Students (JSPE-S)

Abstract

Assessment of students' attitudes towards physicians' empathy is essential in medical education and in practice because empathy is vital in physician-patient communication. To cross-culturally adapt the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (S-version, JSPE-S) into a German version, examine its psychometric properties in comparison to the original US version (psychometric equivalence), and to compare the level of attitude towards empathy to the original US version and to other cultural adaptations. The German version was administered to the 2010 2nd year medical students cohort at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria (n = 516). Item-total score correlations were all positive. Reliability was high (Cronbach's alpha = .82); a 6-7 weeks test-retest correlation for a subsample was .45. In an explanatory factor analysis, a four-factor solution emerged and is akin to published results of the original JSPE-S. This study provides an example of successful cross-cultural adaptation of an assessment instrument. The German adaptation of the JSPE at hand will pave the way for future international research regarding the concept of empathy and its outcomes.

Is the Empathy Level of Medical Students at KAU Changeable along their Study Years? What is behind this Change?

“…This study was conducted with the aim to test this hypothesis in Faculty of medicine, King Abdulaziz University for the first time. The mean empathy score among the medical students in KAU was 106.55 and this level seems to be relatively lower than what was reported in some Western countries such as the USA, mean score was 115, [15,13] and German, mean score was 110.52 [14]. However, the mean score of empathy level of our KAU medical students was near to that of the Asian medical students such as in Iran, mean score was 105.1 [7], in Kuwait, mean score was 104.6 [10], Japan, mean score was 104.3 [4], and Korea, mean score was104 [5].…”

“…Assessment of students' attitudes towards physicians' empathy is essential in medical education and in practice because empathy is vital in physician-patient communication relationship [14]. It was previously hypnotized that physician empathy may decline with clinical training [13].…”

“…Education and Health Careat Jefferson Medical College, to measure the level of empathy among physicians and other health professionals [3].The hypothesis that empathy declines as students' progress through medical school has previously investigated in many Asian countries like Japan [4], South Korea [5], China [6], Iran [7], Bangladesh [8] and India [9], some Arabic countries as Kuwait [10], as well as other countries like UK [11], USA [12], Brazil [13] and German [14] by using the student version of Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (JSPE). To our knowledge, the empathy with patients among the Saudi medical students has not been studied till now.…”

The relationship between subjective well-being and empathy among Turkish medical students

“…A study among Polish medical students found the total empathy score as 112.48±10.88 (Kliszcz et al 2006). Other studies from Italy (Leombruni et al 2014) and Austria (Preusche & Wagner-Menghin 2013) found the empathy scores as 108.71±10.60 and 110.52±12.49 respectively. A recent study among US medical students found the total empathy score as 114.3±10.4 (Hojat & Gonnella 2015).…”

Validation of Slovenian version of Jefferson scale of empathy for students

“…The fostering of development of empathy in undergraduate students is continuously emphasised in international recommendations for medical education. In European countries (18,19) and worldwide (20)(21)(22)(23), students' empathy has been already measured and followed. Besides, there have been attempts to adapt curricula to influence the students' empathy (24)(25)(26).…”