Empathic profile of nursing freshmen

Objective:To analyze the empathic profile and the empathy scores of freshmen of the nursing course.Design and participants:Descriptive study involving 399 freshmen students of two modalities of nursing courses: Bachelor and Bachelor and Teaching Diploma, in the period from 2012 to 2015. A sociodemographic questionnaire and the Empathy Inventory were applied.Ethical considerations:The research received approval from the Research Ethics Committee of the University of Sao Paulo at Ribeirao Preto College of Nursing. The students registered their acceptance to participate in the research by signing the Free and Informed Consent Form and anonymity was guaranteed.Findings:The mean age of the participants was 19 years, being 85.5% female. The students were grouped by course modality and all groups presented high empathy scores. A significant difference (p < 0.001) was found, which indicates that students of the Bachelor and Teaching Diploma program presented a higher degree of empathy for the General Score, Domai...