Perfil da empatia médica de residentes do 3º ano de Ortopedia e Traumatologia.

Abstract

Objectives: The present article has as objective; validate the Jefferson Scale of Medical Empathy for physicians residing in Orthopedics and Traumatology field and identify the empathy profile of resident physicians in the Brazilian context. Methods: The Jefferson Scale of Medical Empathy questionnaire developed to evaluate the level of Empathy was applied to 271 residents of the 3rd year of Orthopedics and Traumatology present at the Brazilian Congress of the respective Society in 2016 in Belo Horizonte. An exploratory factorial analysis was performed in order to validate this scale for physicians, using the main component extraction method and Varimax rotation. Results: The factorial analysis data obtained through questionnaire application revealed weaknesses further corrected by the exclusion of five of its items, allowing outlining consistent factors and, consequently, correlations between variables and empathy. A minimum score of 36 and a maximum score of 105 was found during the study, with the mean degree of empathy being 82.6 with a total score of 105 on the score scale, which may be considered a high score. Conclusions: After the re-adaptation of the questionnaire, a satisfactory and robust validation was obtained, which provided reliable information about the empathy profile expressed by resident physicians. Various variables such as gender, parenthood and maternity, graduation in another specialty, unavailability of library in the residence service, evaluation of residence services from the perspective of the resident, foreign language mastery, receipt of scholarship, prior approval in public contest or owning laptops or tablets are associated with empathy feelings.