Physician Empathy and Its Relation to Age, Gender, and Years of Experience

Abstract

Abstract Background: Empathy is a necessary clinical skill; it is a key element of physician–patient relations which have a significant role in the effectiveness of health care, the physician must have the competence to understand the patient’s situation, perspective, and feelings, and to act on that understanding in a helpful therapeutic way. A highly empathetic doctor is the dream of every patient. Objective: The objective of the study was to determine the level of empathy among physicians at Al-Yarmouk Teaching Hospital and to assess its relation to age, gender, and years of experience. Subjects and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 300 physicians working at Al-Yarmouk Teaching Hospital in Baghdad, Iraq; the data collection was from April 14 to August 14, 2023. The data were collected by a self-administered questionnaire which consists of sociodemographic variables and questions of the Jefferson Scale of Empathy health professional version. Data analysis was done using SPSS version 24. Results: Three hundred physicians participated in the study. The mean age was 31.66 ± 5.288 years, 46% males and 54% females. The mean years of experience were 6.89 ± 5.551 years, 62.7% people-oriented physicians and 37.3% were technology oriented the majority of the people oriented were females and the majority of technology oriented were males. The median score was 102.00 with an interquartile range of 20.75, no significant association was found with gender or medical discipline. The median empathy score of physicians who had <10 years’ experience appeared to be significantly higher in comparison to other groups; (P < 0.001), and also in juniors and the age group of 25–35 years. Conclusions: Empathy scores of younger physicians with <10 years of experience were significantly higher than other physicians, indicating that there is empathy decline as the years of experience increase that could be attributed to numerous factors that need to be further evaluated.