[Teaching empathy in medical education].

Objectives: To determine whether there is any difference in empathic tendencies and attitudes towards communication in medical practice among the first-year students of Adnan Menderes University Medical School, and to determine the effect of education and the relation between these two features.

Method: The Empathic Tendency Scale and Attitudes Towards Communication in Medical Practice Questionnaire were used to collect data from 36 (55.3 % of the total) students (65.7 % female; mean age: 18.3).

Results: Students are clustered into two groups for both scales using K-means analysis, which was used to see whether the students were homogeneous regarding empathy and communication attitudes at the beginning of the teaching period. According to the Empathic Tendency Scale results 25% of students have a high empathic tendency (HET) and 75% have a low empathic tendency (LET) and the results of the Attitudes Towards Communication in Medical Practice Questionnaire indicated that 56% have positive and 44% have negative attitudes towards communication. However, the difference between the pre-and post-teaching results of either group seems to show a tendency towards change (p< 0.10). The change has a negative and a positive tendency in the HET and LET groups, respectively.

Conclusion: Our results seem to verify the predicted differences among the students in their empathic tendencies and attitudes towards communication in medical practice. It seems that empathic tendency is more likely to be changed by an appropriate teaching technique when change within the groups is concerned.