Longitudinal Study of Empathy Levels in Physiotherapy Students (Empathy)

August 15, 2021 updated by: Hulya Yucel, Saglik Bilimleri Universitesi

A Four-Year Longitudinal Study of Empathy Levels in Undergraduate Physiotherapy Students

'Empathy' is a core term of occupations related to health sciences like physiotherapy. In physiotherapy education programs, empathy is necessary to have a successful cooperation with the clients. This study was planned to follow the changes of empathy levels in physiotherapy students of a four-year bachelor program and therefore enhance the curriculum related to the results. To the best of our knowledge, this research is the first longitudinal study about empathy levels of students in Turkey. Hypotheses: Empathy levels of the students increase year by year (1). Female students are more empathetic than male ones (2).

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Totally 120 physiotherapy students at a non-governmental university in Istanbul participated in this study. The Turkish reworded student version of the Jefferson scale of physician empathy was used. Empathy scores were compared related to study years and gender. Empathy scores relevant to gender were compared using Mann-Whitney U test. The Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance was used for differences among the four study years.

Study Type

Observational

Enrollment (Actual)

120

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

19 years to 24 years (Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Sampling Method

Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

physiotherapy students

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • attending the first through fourth year of physiotherapy department
  • being willing to participate in the study

Exclusion Criteria:

do not continue in physiotherapy department

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

Cohorts and Interventions

Group / Cohort
Intervention / Treatment
physiotherapy students
Totally 120 physiotherapy students at a non-governmental university in Istanbul participated in this study.
Behavioral: survey
The Turkish reworded student version of the Jefferson scale of physician empathy was used. Empathy scores were compared related to study years and gender.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Empathy levels of the students
Time Frame: 5 minutes
It was measured if the empathy levels of the students increase year by year
5 minutes

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Empathy levels of female students
Time Frame: 5 minutes
It was measured if female students are more empathetic than male ones
5 minutes

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Saglik Bilimleri Universitesi

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

September 15, 2016

Primary Completion (Actual)

December 15, 2019

Study Completion (Actual)

June 15, 2020

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

July 22, 2021

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

August 15, 2021

First Posted (Actual)

August 23, 2021

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

August 23, 2021

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

August 15, 2021

Last Verified

August 1, 2021

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 71306642/050-01-04/257

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

UNDECIDED

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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