Cross-cultural comparisons of empathy and its influencing factors in first-year medical students

The growing interest in examining empathy in the field of medicine
results from the fact that being empathetic not only increases the
patient’s satisfaction in the physician-patient relationship but
also facilitates the diagnostic process and improves the clinical
outcome. In 1977 empathy in medical students was measured for the
first time in Australia; numerous investigations on empathy at
medical schools all over the world followed. Most of them revealed
a higher empathy score in females as well as a connection between
the students’ choice of future medical field and their empathy
scores. Furthermore, a decline in empathy scores during medical
school proceedings was repeatedly found out. So far, there have
been no comparative studies on empathy which have taken into
account a possible influence of cultural factors on medical
students` empathy. The main objectives of this study were to
investigate and compare empathy in first-year undergraduate medical
students of two different cultural areas focusing on the detection
of new influencing factors such as cultural features and
socio-demographic characteristics. Moreover, further research on
known influencing factors such as gender and the future medical
field was done. In the academic year 2010/11, a total of 257
students from Jimma University, Ethiopia and Ludwig Maximilians
University of Munich, Germany completed the Balanced Emotional
Empathy Scale (BEES) as an instrument for the quantification of
emotional empathy, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RME-R
test) for measuring cognitive empathy as well as a questionnaire on
socio-demographic and cultural characteristics. Furthermore,
interviews on the definition of empathy and possible influencing
factors were conducted. The main findings of the study include the
identification of religiosity, the choice of the future medical
field and the gender as influencing factors on the BEES score.
Participants who declared to be actively practicing their religion
have higher BEES scores than participants who did not. Participants
who prefer a medical field with continuity of patient care have
higher BEES scores than those preferring a field with less
interpersonal contact. Compared to males, females have
significantly higher scores in the BEES as well as in the RME-R
test. Moreover, a positive correlation between the BEES and the
performance in the RME-R test indicating a connection between
emotional and cognitive empathy was detected.