Empathy in patient care…”a cognitive attribute that involves an ability to understand the patient’s inner experiences and perspective and a capability to communicate this understanding.”

The Jefferson Scale of Empathy was developed by researchers at the Center for Research in Medical Education and Health Care at Jefferson Medical College to measure empathy in physicians and health professionals (HP version) and medical students (S-version). A version of the scale for health professional students (HPStudent version) is now available.

The scale is a self-administered 20-item test comprising a 7-point Likert scale that can be completed in 5-10 minutes. It has been translated into 23 languages including Chinese (China, Taiwan), Croatian, Dutch, Finnish, French (Canada), German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Persian, Philippino, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish (Chile, Mexico, Peru, Spain), and Turkish. Guidelines for translation are available from the Center. We would be glad to hear from you if you are interested in translating the scale.

Web administration from our website is available for the HP version of the scale. We hope to have the student versions available in the near future. Scannable forms may also be purchased from the Center. Forms include the scale, demographic and specialty information. Scoring services insure data entry and scoring accuracy and provide uniformity of scoring procedures. See the order form for more information.

The Standard Report includes descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, range, mode and percentiles) for the group of respondents, an empathy score for each respondent, and Excel spreadsheet of raw data and individual scores. Additional Statistical Analyses are available upon request for an additional fee. These include gender/specialty comparisons, group comparisons by total JSPE scores, comparisons by custom coded groups, and pretest-posttest comparisons.

For information, contact mohammadreza.hojat@jefferson.edu.

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