Empathy among health science undergraduates toward the diagnosis of chronic pain: An experimental study

To analyse the empathetic response of future health professionals toward people diagnosed with chronic pain differentiated by the degree of visibility and credibility of symptoms.

A total of 203 undergraduates performed an experimental task using vignettes depicting different diagnoses of chronic pain and completed questionnaires measuring dispositional and situational empathy. A MANCOVA analysis was conducted.

The main effects of chronic pain diagnoses did not significantly affect situational empathy (p = .587, η² = 0.007, d = 0.229). The dispositional empathy variables perspective-taking and personal distress affected the situational empathy scores (p = .002, η² = 0.072, d = 0.906, and p = .043, η² = 0.032, d = 0.547, respectively).

It would seem appropriate to foster intra-individual empathy factors among health science undergraduates such that they can more readily understand the process of individual adaptation to chronic pain and thus manage it more effectively.

It would be useful for dispositional empathy to form part of the transversal competences of the training programmes of future health professionals from the beginning of their studies.