Thomson, Diane, Hassenkamp, Anne-Marie and Mansbridge, Christina (1997) The measurement of empathy in a clinical and a non-clinical setting: does empathy increase with clinical experience? Physiotherapy, 83(4), pp. 173-180. ISSN (print) 0031-9406

Abstract

Empathy is a process which encompasses a person's attempt to understand another person and then to demonstrate this understanding by means of appropriate non-verbal and verbal responses. It requires self-awareness and the characteristics of an effective helping relationship, both of which are important in physiotherapy. The purpose of this research is to measure empathy in a clinical setting and a non-clinical setting using the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory and the Truax Accurate Empathy Scale. These measurements were used to investigate first the relationship between years of education and experience with empathetic levels in students and qualified physiotherapists in a non-clinical setting, and secondly to compare the empathetic levels of senior and junior physiotherapists in a clinical setting. The results in the first study indicated that qualified physiotherapists were more empathetic than students (using the TAES) showing that empathy increases with education and clinical experience. This however was confounded in the second study in which the junior physiotherapists were found to be more empathetic than the senior physiotherapists in their first sessions with new patients.

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