Empathy, gender and empathic declination in nursing students

Abstract

Objective: To determine the empathy in nursing students. Material and methods: Exploratory, cross-sectional study. A sample of 479 students was studied. The Jefferson Empathy Scale was used. Empathy and its components were analyzed. Results: There were no significant differences in the academic year factor of the students. However in the gender factor they were found. An increase in empathy was observed in the female gender; in the masculine gender a decrease is observed from the second year. There were differences between the genders. Conclusions: The empathy in women behave “flat” through the courses, but with values ​ higher than the general average of the observed data. The empathy in men behave with a tendency to empathic decline.