Patient empathy and related factors in undergraduate and postgraduate dental students

Communicating effectively with patients is the first step to begin clinical empathy. Empathy is a cognitive and behavioral attribute that plays an important role in the clinical performance of health care professionals. The aim of the present study was to evaluate empathy in undergraduate and postgraduate dental students of Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Science.
In this descriptive cross-sectional study 312 dental students, 252 undergraduates and 60 postgraduates, were completed the HP version of the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy. Data were analyzed by SPSS17 using T-test and ANOVA. The significance level was set as P≤ 0.05.
Overall, 177(56.7%) men and 135(43.3%) women, with the mean age as 25.0±3.1 and age range between 21.0-45.0 participated in the study. The mean empathy scores was 86.6±8.8 (ranged between (69.0-118.0). The means of empathy scores was not significantly related with age, sex, university admission status and educational level (P Based on the results of the present study, many factors could affect the empathy levels in dental students. Since the empathy scores in the present study are not satisfactory, a proper educational program to improve the empathy levels in dental students seems to be necessary.