Medical volunteers self-analysis of empathic understanding others

Introduction: Empathy researches represent a great difference among defining empathy. Nowadays, it could be distinguished emotional and behavioural empathy. Literature classify an empathy as: moody, apperceptional and intellectual. The empathy as a term was introduced to psychology in 1909 by Tischner.

Aim: The aim of the study was to analyze an empathic understanding others level among medical volunteers.

Material and methods: Research was conducted among 210 healthy volunteers. 26% of respondents worked as a volunteer shorter than a year, 38% were volunteers do 2-3 years and 36% – more than

3 years. 34% were students and 38% professional workers. Empathy Understanding Questionnaire (KRE) by Węgliński was used in study, based on empathy conception as an emotional-behavioral syndrome.

Results: People who were working in hospitals reached higher empathy understanding scores than volunteers from other places. It was proved a relation between gender (p = 0.001) and working place as a volunteer (p = 0.032) and a level of empathy understanding others.

Conclusions: Volunteers reached medium score 67. Only 13.8% of respondents reached high level of empathy understanding. Females reached higher scores according to males. It was proved an important relations between gender and working place as a volunteer and empathy level.