Empathy scores amongst undergraduate medical students and its correlation to their academic performance

Empathy is one of the soft skills required for building rapport and having meaningful patient-doctor interaction. Its effect on academic performance at the undergraduate level amongst Pakistani medical students is not known. This study was done to assess the relationship between empathy and gender, and the academic performance of undergraduate medical students of Azad Kashmir.

This cross-sectional study was done in Poonch Medical College, Azad Kashmir, Pakistan, from May 2018 to May 2019. The sample size for this study consisted of 200 students, determined by Krejcie and Morgan sample size determination chart. Students who agreed to participate in the study were enrolled according to convenience sampling using google forms. The Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) questionnaire was utilized as the data collection tool. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 25. The ethical review board approved the study. Comparisons between males and females at the IRI questions level, IRI domains level, and total IRI were made using the Mann-Whitney U test. The Spearman Rank Correlation test was used to assess the correlation between academic performance, IRI domains, and total IRI scores. A one-way ANOVA test was done to assess the relationship between academic performance and their study years.

A total of one hundred and fifty-one students (males 83, females 68, response rate 75.5%) participated in the study from the third to the final year of medical college. The mean empathy scores of males and females were 90.76 ± 8.39 and 91.72 ± 9.76 (p-value = 0.552). On the empathic concern scale, female students had significantly higher empathy scores (25.44 ± 3.49) than males (23.78 ± 3.88) (p-value=0.008). No significant correlation was found between the empathy scores and academic performance, using Spearman's correlation test (p>0.05).

Females showed significantly higher empathy scores than males for two Interpersonal Reactivity Index items and empathic concern scale. Overall, male and female students had similar total empathy scores. The relationship between empathy and academic performance was non-significant.