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Are there differences in health professionals’ empathy due to academic and clinical experience?

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Abstract

The health professional’s empathy has a positive effect on treatment outcomes and the well-being of both patients and professionals. The aim of this research was to assess the empathy levels of first-year medical and psychology students and to compare these levels with those of trained psychologists and physicians. In addition, we also analysed the potential effects of years of professional practice and the average number of patients treated on the empathy of professionals. We evaluated cognitive and emotional empathy through the Interpersonal Reactive Index and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task. The results showed that perspective taking in medical students was lower than that of psychotherapists, and psychotherapists and physicians reported lower levels of personal distress than psychology students. We did not find evidence of general detrimental effects of clinical experience on the capacity to feel sympathy and compassion towards others, but we did find lower empathic concern levels in those professionals with higher workloads. Considering that these effects have been seldom studied among psychologists, additional longitudinal research might indicate how empathy is influenced by training over time. On the other hand, since emotional distress can be detrimental to the professional’s performance, our results suggest that empathy needs to be promoted and trained, in order to preserve the ability to feel with others without falling into an extreme of emotional distress.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the University of Buenos Aires and the Italian Hospital of Buenos Aires for their efforts facilitating access tostudents and professionals. The authors also would like to thank Professor Martín Etchevers and students Natalia Helmich and Sheila Giusti and Fabián Lagoute for his technical collaboration.

Funding/Support

The authors acknowledge and thank the Faculty of Psychology and Human Relations of the Interamerican Open University for funding the project “Health and empathy: Evolution of empathy according to academic training and professional practice”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Interdisciplinary Center of Mathematical and Experimental Psychology Research (CIIPME), National Council of Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Natalia Putrino, Belén Mesurado & María Cristina Richaud de Minzi

  2. Faculty of Psychology and Human Relations, Interamerican Open University (UAI), Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Natalia Putrino

  3. Grupo de Lingüística y Neurobiología Experimental del Lenguaje, Instituto de Ciencias Humanas, Sociales y Ambientales (INCIHUSA – CONICET), Mendoza, Argentina

    Ángel Tabullo

  4. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación, Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina, Sede Mendoza, Mendoza, Argentina

    Ángel Tabullo

Authors
  1. Natalia Putrino
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  2. Ángel Tabullo
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  3. Belén Mesurado
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  4. María Cristina Richaud de Minzi
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Correspondence to Natalia Putrino.

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Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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We have no conflict of interest.

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Putrino, N., Tabullo, Á., Mesurado, B. et al. Are there differences in health professionals’ empathy due to academic and clinical experience?. Curr Psychol 40, 647–654 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-018-9980-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-018-9980-x

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