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BACKGROUND: With increasing demand of dietetics services in clinical setting, data is needed to examine how dietitians can improve the quality of patient services. The level of healthcare providers’ empathy has been linked with better clinical outcomes in patients’ care. To date, there is no study published on empathy amongst clinical dietitians in Malaysia. Hence, this study aimed to determine the practicing dietitians’ empathy level in Malaysia and explore the differentiating factors of empathy level.
METHOD: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 69 clinical dietitians using purposive sampling from private and government hospitals in Malaysia. The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ), a validated 16-item questionnaire was self-administrated, either by online survey method or face-to-face method. Additional information on gender, ethnicity, years of experience and percentage of working time spent on clinical, administrative and others were collected.
RESULTS: Mean total TEQ scores of 69 dietitians was found to be 49.72 ± 5.62 (score ranged from 35 to 63). Significant difference of mean total TEQ scores was found amongst the private and government hospitals dietitians. Dietitians in private hospital scored (51.06 ± 5.26) compared to dietitians in government hospital (48.27 ± 5.72). No significant difference was found in gender, ethnicity, years of experience and percentage of working time spend on clinical consultations, administrative and others.
CONCLUSION: Results of this study supported the hypothesis that there are differences in empathy level of clinical dietitian by the work setting. Future study is required to explore the understanding to the relationship between hospital setting dietitians and empathy level.
Keywords- Empathy level, Dietitian, Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ)
No. of words- 252 without keywords