Abstract:

Objective To verify the validity of the Chinese version of Jefferson scale of physician empathy (JSPE), survey the empathy of clinical interns and residents by the JSPE, and provide evidences for establishing education and measuring methods of empathy. Methods The JSPE was translated into Chinese and the empathy of 1 043 clinical interns and residents of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine were surveyed by the Chinese version of JSPE, so as to comprehend the general level of empathy and the differences of empathy of people with different gender, grade, and education. Results Mean scores of residents and females were higher than those of interns and males. The differences were statistically significant (P<0.05). The results of survey did not show the trend of decrease of empathy with age. Compared with results of other countries, the mean scores of empathy of surveyed clinical interns and residents were an intermediate level. Conclusion The reliability of Chinese version of JSPE is good. There are some limitations for conducting the survey only by JSPE. The education of empathy should be combined with multiple research methods in order to discover the correlation between the measure of empathy and other factors.

Key words: empathy, intern, resident, scale, measurement, evaluation