EVALUATING EMPATHY FOR PATIENT SCORE AND ITS RELATED FACTORS IN UNDERGRADUATE OPERATING ROOM STUDENTS

Empathy is the basis of the healthcare provider-patient relationship which has favorable outcomes for patients in stressful and technological environment of operating room. Determining the empathy score in operating room students can help to identify existing deficiencies and enhance this skill. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the empathy for patient score and its related factors in undergraduate operating room students.

This cross-sectional (descriptive analysis) study was carried out in the academic year 2017-2018 on 110 operating room students from the first to the fourth years that were selected by convenience sampling in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. The research instrument completed by the samples was the Jefferson Scale of Empathy-Health Profession Students version. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and statistical tests in SPSS 22.0 software.

Total mean empathy scores of operating room students was 89.2 ± 14.2 and the scores of its dimensions including: perspective-taking was 55.06 ± 5.5, compassionate care was 26.3 ± 12.01 and standing in patient’s shoes was 7.8 ± 2.3. There was no significant difference between the total empathy scores and demographic characteristics of the samples.

The empathy score in operating room students was moderate. So empathetic communication training for students in this field of study should be considered. Since the relationship between empathy score and demographic characteristics was not significant, definite conclusion in this regard requires more research.