Empathy levels in undergraduate and postgraduate dental students in Isfahan Faculty of Dentistry in 2011

AbstractIntroduction: Empathy between dental practitioners and dental patients increases communication between them, resulting in improvements in patient satisfaction and efficacy of oral health care. Proper communication and empathy between dental practitioners and patients are major concerns of professors, managers and education programmers. The aim of this study was to evaluate empathy between undergraduate and postgraduate dental students and their patients in Isfahan Faculty of Dentistry in 2011.Materials and methods: In this cross-sectional study 205 randomly selected participants, 91 postgraduate and 114 undergraduate students in Isfahan Faculty of Dentistry, completed the Farsi version of Jefferson questionnaire of physician empathy. The undergraduate students were selected from those in the clinical period of their studies in 2011. Data was analyzed by SPSS 11.5 using t-test, ANOVA, a post hoc Tukey test and descriptive statistics (α=0.05).Results: The mean empathy scores in female and male students were 88.93 and 88.24, respectively. The scores in postgraduate and undergraduate dental students were 85.97 and 90.61, respectively. The means of empathy scores did not significantly decrease in female and male students and with an increase in the educational levels (p value = 0.219 and p value = 0.173). There was a significant difference in empathy scores between third-year undergraduate students and postgraduate students (p value = 0.00).Conclusion: The empathy scores of undergraduate dental students based on educational level and postgraduate students are less than the ideal and acceptable levels (120‒140). It is necessary to design proper educational programs to improve empathy scores in dental students. Key words: Dentistry, Education, Empathy, Student.