Comparison of the Relationship between Patient-Patient Empathy and Birth Order in Medical Students in Iran and England: Cross-Cultural Study

In this research, an intercultural comparison between medical students from Iran and England was made to investigate the potential impact of culture on empathy and the relationships between empathy and child birth order in the family. The population consisted of medical students of medical universities from three cities: Tehran (Iran), London and Sheffield (England). The sample consisted of 182 students from two countries (88 Iranian, 94 English) which was selected by convenience sampling method. Data was collected by scale of empathy- student version and researcher made demographic questionnaire. Data was analyzed by using student’s t- test, MANOVA and Scheffe post hoc test. Results showed that the physician empathy of Iranian medical students is significantly higher than English students (P <0.01). Also the results showed that birth order of students has a meaningful correlation with their empathy (F=2.96,P<0.05). The results of multivariate analysis of variance showed that in the empathy variable, empathic care and self-care is more than English students rather than the patient of Iranian students, but they do not differ in the component of adopting the view. The result of this study reveals the importance of cultural differences and family factors such as birth order on personality factors for instance the physician ability to empathize with patients.