Özet:

Empathy and communication skills are important factors in the patient-physician relationship and are considered essential professional characteristics for clinicians and it has positive effects on medical practice. Therefore, the evaluation of empathy and communication skills in medical students is important for medical education. The aim of the study is to evaluate the empathy and communication skill levels of the first and last year medical faculty students and to determine the factors affecting them.In this descriptive study a questionnaire form including sociodemographic information form, Communication Skills Inventory (CSI) and Jefferson Doctor Empathy Scale-Student Version (JSPE-S) was applied to 1st and 6th grade medical students. The mean age of 294 students participating in the study was 20.93±3.01 (17-30) years. First-year students were 58.2% (n=171) of the participants and 66.3% (n=195) were female. The mean JSPE-S and CSI scores were 106.04±14.19 and 159.47±14.74, respectively. Female students' communication skills and JSPE-S scores were significantly higher than male students' scores (p=0.003 p=0.012). While no significant relationship was found between the communication skill scores of the first and last-year students (p=0.953), the JSPE-S score of the 1st year students was significantly higher than the last-year students' score (p<0.001). A moderately significant positive correlation was found between the JSPE-S total score and the communication skill score (r=0.431, p<0.001). While the communication skills of the first and last-year medical students were similar, the empathy level of the first year students was found to be higher than the empathy level of the last year students. As the level of empathy increases, communication skills also increase. Empathy should be taught and developed during the medical education process.

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