TITLE:
Study on Empathy among Undergraduate Students of the Medical Profession in Nepal
AUTHORS:
Krishna Bahadur GC, Sudarshan Paudel
KEYWORDS:
Final Year’s Medical Students, Compassion and Empathy, Jefferson Scale, Nepal
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Biosciences and Medicines,
Vol.5 No.11,
November
23,
2017
ABSTRACT: Background: The incumbent of medical professional is expected to be socially responsible and emotionally
empathetic along with good communication propensity to fasten the doctor-patient relationship. Whilst doctor’s proficiency to
recognize a patient’s perspectives, and convey such an understanding back to the
patient; in our case, the empathy and compassion level of promising medical
professional is unknown in Nepal. Thus, this study aimed to analyze the compassion and empathy score of final year’s undergraduate students of four medical colleges
in Nepal. Methods: Self-reported empathy measures were obtained using
the Jefferson Scale of Physician-Student
version. Results: The degree of empathy for
the participants was 97.28 (SD = 14.44) with a median score of 96.00 and a
range of 44 (min) to 133 (max). There was a significant difference on scores of the
Jefferson scale of physician empathy between NMC Nepalgunj and BPKIHS (p = 0.00) and between NMC Nepalgunj and
Manipal Pokhara (p = 0.00), as well
as between UCMS and Manipal Pokhara (p = 0.044). These results were significant at the 95% confidence interval. Conclusions: The mean empathy score for the Nepali students is
lower than medical students from developed countries but almost similar to
medical students from other Asian medical students. The female Nepali medical
students scored slightly higher than their male counterparts. Thus
colleges have to develop academic programs to improve empathy and compassion
among medical students through providing adequate time to consult with patient
and faculties.