Abstract
Objective: The aim of this study is to check whether there are differences in the distribution of empathy levels in dental students from nine faculties of dentistry Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica and Dominican Republic. Methods: The levels of empathy and matrices of empathy construct matrices are estimated dental students by using the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy, the Spanish version for students (S version) culturally validated in Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica and Dominican Republic measured by arbitrator criteria. Cronbach α is estimated. Data of empathic orientation of the studied factors between faculties are analyzed and compared by ANOVA and Duncan test and matrices of empathy construct using discriminant analysis. Results: We find that there are differences in levels of empathy between universities, courses, gender and interaction between the Dental Faculty (University) and Course. The comparison between matrices shows unexplained variances and differences observed between the levels of empathy in student populations. Conclusions: Variability in empathy is observed in the studied factors and among student populations. The variability is an empirical finding, but is not possible in this work, to explain why.
Highlights
Empathy is an attribute that contributes positively [1]-[5] in the process of patient care by the health professional
We find that there are differences in levels of empathy between universities, courses, gender and interaction between the Dental Faculty (University) and Course
This study, an exploratory, cross-sectional and ex post facto cause-effect [12],. It addresses students composed by levels from first through fifth years of Dental School, from the Faculty of Dentistry of Metropolitan University (Erazo et al.) [13] and San Martin de Barranquilla (Bilbao et al.) [3], University of Magdalena and University of Cartagena of the Republic of Colombia; Universidad Latina and University of Panama of the Republic of Panama; Latin University of Science and Technology (Sanchez et al.) [14] and the University of Costa Rica (Howard et al.) [15] of the Republic of Costa Rica, and the Universidad Central del Este (Silva et al.) [11] of the Dominican Republic
Summary
Empathy is an attribute that contributes positively [1]-[5] in the process of patient care by the health professional. The possible explanation for this diversity of results may be due to the varying components of empathy maybe, in turn, influenced by other variables that affect the structure of the components of empathy [5]. According to Silva et al [11], these differences open new areas of investigation concerning the possible socio-cultural implications that can influence the empathy. There are no studies comparing the empathy between different higher education institutions within a country and between countries. The existence of such differences may constitute empirical evidence of socio-cultural factors that affect the structuring of empathy in ontogenetic processes in the subjects.
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