Empathy, personality traits, and emotional management in 2nd and 4th-year dentistry students: a single-center study

Abstract

Background Patients fearing dental interventions are at risk of delaying or skipping much-needed treatments. Empathic communication could lead to a higher rate of compliance from patients within this group. Empathy, the big five personality traits, and emotion management abilities are all known to influence the quality of communication between dentists and patients. This study was conducted to analyze whether there is a correlation between these factors in dentistry students. Methods Dentistry students in their 2nd and 4th year of study were asked to complete questionnaires assessing empathy, emotion management, and personality traits. Out of a total of 148 eligible participants, 53 students (34%) volunteered to participate. For empathy, the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (students’ version; JSPE-S) and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) were used. Personality traits were assessed using the Short Big Five Inventory (BFI-s), and the Situational Test of Emotional Management (STEM) to measure emotional management ability. Results Higher scores for emotion management were significantly correlated with the female gender (p ≤ 0.005) and with higher scores in openness (p ≤ 0.05). Students with higher scores in openness also achieved higher scores on the IRI subscales: Perspective taking (p ≤ 0.05), Fantasy (p ≤ 0.01), Empathic concern (p ≤ 0.05), and Personal distress (p ≤ 0.05). For JSPE-S, no correlation with emotion management and personality traits was found. Conclusion Empathy and emotion management might not be significantly related in dentistry students. Regarding personality traits, students who scored higher on openness also indicated higher abilities in emotion management. These findings should be taken into consideration when planning communication courses for dentistry students, as it might be possible to independently train empathy and emotion management as part of emotional intelligence.

Validity and reliability of the Spanish version of the consultation and relational empathy measure in dental students (Sp‐Dent‐CARE): A cross‐sectional study

“…Some of the reasons reported may be stress, work overload or psychological fatigue that also prevent the professionals from connecting with, or emotionally sustaining, other people. 11 Previous studies that have translated and validated this questionnaire to the cultural and professional context have been conducted in the field of nursing and family medicine. 1,2,4,7 All of them, with the exception of a study conducted in Croatia, 3 recorded a 1-factor result with high factor loadings (>0.8) for the questionnaire items.…”

“…All this evidences probable depersonalization that arises unconsciously and unintentionally. Some of the reasons reported may be stress, work overload or psychological fatigue that also prevent the professionals from connecting with, or emotionally sustaining, other people 11 …”

“…Patients with dental anxiety or phobia are at risk of avoiding dental visits and thus of needing more invasive treatments 11 . In fact, the vicious circle of fear of the dentist was described in 1984, showing avoidance of dental visits to worsen oral health status 15 .…”

Psychometric profiling of individuals using Twitter profiles: A psychological Natural Language Processing based approach

“…Another domain is understanding the learning gain in e‐learning context 9 . In another study, 10 researchers analyzed the effect of personality traits of dentistry in communicating with their patients.…”

Level of empathy in dental students from a Paraguayan university during patient care in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2021

“…En los profesionales de salud la falta de empatía puede estar relacionada con problemas de salud mental, inclusive aspectos cognitivos del mismo podrían predecir síntomas de depresión (2) . Por otro lado, algunos pacientes acuden al consultorio odontológico con temor para su tratamiento, la comunicación empática por parte del profesional podría favorecer la adherencia al tratamiento (3) .…”