Objective:

To explore the latent dimensions, present in the 20 items of the empathy construct, measured in teachers of a dental school.

Methodology:

Dental teachers belonging to the Faculty of Dentistry of the Andrés Bello University, Santiago, consisting of 145 teachers of both sexes, in which 88.27% participated. The instrument applied was the Jefferson Empathy Scale for Health Professionals. Compliance with the model and the measurement of empathy levels was verified by means of exploratory factor analysis. The empathy measurement model was built using exploratory factor analysis. The level of significance used was α<0.005.

Results:

The overall results indicate that empathy levels are adequate. A three-factor model can be established. Within the Compassionate Care dimension, belonging to Emotional Empathy there is one item (14), which presented a significant correlation with Perspective Taking with the patient belonging to Cognitive Empathy.

Conclusions:

A three-dimensional model of empathy in undergraduate teachers with the patient is established. The items of each of the dimensions correlated with each other in agreement with the original model of empathy. These findings should be corroborated by a confirmatory factor analysis.

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