Aim:

The objective of the study is to psychometrically characterize the empathy data and its dimensions, as well as to determine the empathic distribution among the academic areas in the process of training undergraduate nursing students.

Methods:

This is a comparative, non-experimental, cross-sectional study. The studied sample consisted of 365 nursing students of both sexes belonging to the Faculty of Nursing of the Universidad Veracruzana, México. The total population was 425 students and the sample constituted 85.88% of the total number of students (May to July 2022). The psychometric properties of the Empathy Scale for Health Professionals, student version (reliability, construct validity, and model invariance) were studied. To describe and compare the groups, descriptive statistics, analysis of variance, and graphs of the means with bars -representing the 95% confidence interval- were used.

Results:

The empathy measure reaches satisfactory reliability coefficients and it presents adequate indicators of construct validity indicators, resulting in an invariant measure according to academic area and sex. The existence of deficits in some of the dimensions of empathy was found.

Conclusion:

The psychometric analysis (model of underlying dimensions and invariance), prior to the estimation of the empathy parameters, constitutes a methodological necessity that theoretically guarantees the estimation of the empathy levels and the comparison between groups. The distribution of empathy levels between academic areas was characterized by a deficit in the dimensions of compassionate care and "walking in the patient's shoes".

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