Introduction:

Empathy refers to an aspect of personality that plays an important role in interpersonal relationships, facilitating communication in order to favor the dentist-patient relationship. This interaction will improve the quality of dental care service. The aim of this study was to describe the self-reported empathy levels among dental undergraduate students, according to gender and education levels.

Materials and methods:

exploratory and cross-sectional questionnaire based study was carried out with a sample size of 326 undergraduate dental students. Data was obtained from the first to the final year, empathy levels of students were assessed by the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy-Health Profession Students Version Questionnaire, psychometrically validated to measure empathy. For the analysis of the results, the Shapiro-Wilk normality test was applied. The means were compared using an analysis of variance with bifactorial Model type III (Anova) with first order interaction. With a significance level of p <0.05.

Results:

reliability was satisfactory (0.72). The scores obtained in the EEMJ ranged from a minimum of 54 to a maximum of 130 points for women and a minimum of 55 and a maximum of 126 for men, the average of global empathy scores was 95,80±12,9, The results were not significant (p = 0.185) for the academic level factor and gender (p = 0.25).

Conclusion:

although there were no statistically significant differences in empathic orientation between the academic and gender years; it is highlighted that in the last year of the race the score increased; men reported higher levels of empathic orientation in absolute values than women; the highest level of empathic orientation was detected in the third year group.

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