Abstract

Introduction: Empathy is seen to be one of the key components of healthy doctor-patient relationships and is strongly linked to better patient outcomes. It is one of the personality traits that is thought to be crucial for the growth of interpersonal comprehension and for supporting communication skills. A crucial component of medical school is helping medical students who will one day practice medicine to become more empathetic. This study set out to determine the parameters that were connected with the mean empathy score of medical students at a private medical college. Aims: To find out the empathy scores using TEQ questionnaire and compare the scores with socio demographic profile. Materials and Methods: At mamata medical college, Khammam a cross-sectional study was carried out, study consists of 212 voluntary participants who are undergraduates studying MBBS with ages ranging from 16 to 27. Students belonging to the first, second, third, fourth year who are voluntarily willing to do the survey based on a questionnaire was sent to them to collect the data of the study. The 16 questions on the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire is used. Results: The study respondents comprised of 212 MBBS students. Their ages ranged from 16 to 27 years. Majority were females 132 (62.3%), males 80 (37.7%) The overall mean TEQ score was calculated to be 42.47±7.40, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.03. We assessed the association of various factors with empathy levels among these students. There was a significant association between empathy levels and year of study of the respondents. Analysis yielded a significant difference between mean. Conclusion: The average TEQ score among medical students at this Mamata medical college was 42.47±7.40. Higher Scores are seen in females (45.60±7.42), first years (48.92±8.05) and people belonging to Rural areas (44.13±6.55).

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