ArticleBMC psychology2022
Reliability of Greek version of the Toronto empathy questionnaire in medical students and associations with sociodemographic and lifestyle factors.
Article in BMC psychology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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7 citing papers in PubMed, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Empathy and Burnout Among Nurses: a Cross-Sectional Study in a University Hospital in Central Greece.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Article
- Development and validation of the medical students' self-reported selfishness questionnaire (MSSSQ): a context-specific design for assessing selfish tendencies in medical education.BMC medical education · 2025Article
- Teacher-student empathic relationship shaping: an elimination mechanism for psychological segmentations in entrepreneurship education.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Communication skills as a bridge between medical and public health education: the case of Greek medical students.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- The Greek Jefferson Scale of Empathy-Medical Student Version (JSE-S): Psychometric Properties and Its Associated Factors.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Transgender Attitudes and Beliefs Scale-Greek (TABS-Gr) version: translation and initial evaluation of psychometric properties among medical students.BMC medical education · 2023Article
- The relationship between oxytocin levels with empathy and breastfeeding intention in female medical students: A cross-sectional study.Annals of medicine and surgery (2012) · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundEmpathy is an important key driver of any therapeutic relationship. It is beneficial for both physicians and patients. Enhancing physician's empathy should be an important goal of medical education. As there was a literature gap regarding the topic of empathy among medical students in Greece, this study aimed to contribute to filling this gap.
methodsA cross-sectional study was conducted. A socio-demographic questionnaire and the 52-item Greek version of the Toronto composite empathy scale (TCES) for measuring the cognitive and emotional aspects of empathy in both personal and professional life was administered to all the medical students in the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in Greece. Descriptive statistics were displayed for demographics. The associations of the variables were quantified by Chi-2 independence tests and Pearson's Correlation Coefficient. The reliability and validity of the questionnaire was determined by Cronbach's α, Hotelling's T-Squared Test, and Pearson correlation. Paired and Independent Sample T-Tests and One-way ANOVAs indicated statistically significant mean differences among the variables or subgroups of the variables.
resultsThe 52-item TCES, 26 for the personal (Per) setting and another 26 for professional (Pro) life, equally divided into cognitive (Cog) and emotional (Emo) empathy in each case. The overall reliability of the TCES questionnaire was found to be high (Cronbach's α = 0.895, significant positive correlations between the subscales). The mean total score of empathy showed that students had a moderately high empathy. Further, there was a statistically significant difference in means between the Per-Cog and Per-Emo settings (p < 0.001), the Pro-Cog and Pro-Emo (p < 0.001), the Per-Cog and Pro-Cog (p = 0.004), and the Per-Emo and Pro-Emo (p < 0.001). Females had significantly higher empathy scores (mean score 208.04) than males (192.5) on the Per-Cog, Per-Emo and Pro-Emo subscales. Furthermore, a positive correlation was found between empathy and factors such as love for animals, interest in medical ethics, belief in God, having an ill person in the family, class year or carrier intention.
conclusionsThe TCES is applicable to medical students. For the most part our findings were consistent with previous literature. However, we identified some nuances that might draw researchers' attention. The results of this study may contribute to plan interventions in the curriculum to enhance empathy in the medical students.
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