Avaliação do poder discriminatório da escala brasileira de empatia clínica em relação à dimensionalidade de empatia demonstrada pelo estudante de medicina

Abstract

Introduction: Empathy is fundamental in doctor-patient relationship, therefore, the development of this multidimensional skill should be one of the learning goals in training of health professionals. Despite the use of strategies for empathy development in medical students, measuring empathy remains a challenge. Recently, a Brazilian Scale of Clinical Empathy (EBEC) was developed for medical students in context of clinical care, addressing affective, cognitive and behavioral components of the construct. Objective: Evaluate the discriminative power of the EBEC regarding the dimensionality of empathy demonstrated by medical students. Methodology: Cross-sectional study with qualitative and quantitative approach, conducted with 110 students from 5th, 6th and 11th periods of medicine. Students completed a sociodemographic questionnaire and the EBEC. Subsequently, they watched a video presenting a clinical case and then filled out the Health Empathy Map (MES) related to the clinical case in the video. Results: Overall, the empathy level measured by the EBEC was high among students. Variables such as female sex, experience of severe illness in family and intention to pursue clinical or clinical/surgical specialty were associated with higher empathy scores. There was no significant difference in average scores between students at the beginning of clinical phase and those at the end of the course. It was also observed that both students addressing affective dimension and those classified as bidimensional or multidimensional by MES showed higher empathy scores. Conclusion: EBEC is useful in identifying differences in empathy dimensions among students, especially when they exhibit two-dimensionality or multidimensionality.