Empathic concern and professional characteristics associated with clinical empathy in French general practitioners

Figures & data

Table I. Description of 295 French general practitioners responding to a survey on empathy.

Variables	Mean and standard deviation (SD) or %	Sample range
Age (SD)	51.0 (9.5)	27–75
Female physicians (%)	49
Years of clinical experience (SD)	22.8 (10)	1–50
Self-reported length of consultation in minutes (SD)	20.1 (5.9)	8–60
Clinical empathy: JSPE total score (SD)^a	111.8 (10.6)	84–134
Empathic concern: TEQ score (SD)^b	45.9 (5.4)	24–58
Professional reflective activity
Balint attendee (%)	38
Clinical supervisor (%)	62
Balint attendee or clinical supervisor (%)	76

^aJSPE possible range: 20–140.

^bTEQ possible range: 0–164.

Table II. Hierarchical regression analysis on clinical empathy (JSPE) among 295 French general practitioners.

Step	Model	B (non-standardized coefficients)	Standard error	β (standardized coefficients)	T
1	Constant	78.91	4.97		15.89^a
	Empathic concern (TEQ)	0.72	0.11	0.36	6.66^a
2	Constant	45.44	10.55		4.31^a
	Empathic concern (TEQ)	1.27	0.22	0.64	5.78^a
	Years of clinical experience	20.01	0.06	–0.01	–0.19
	Consultation length	0.33	0.09	0.19	3.51^a
	One reflective activity (i.e. Balint attendee or clinical supervisor)	35.9	11.6	1.45	3.08^b
	One reflective activity*empathic concern (= interaction term)	–0.74	0.25	–1.40	–2.97^b

^aP < 0.001.

^bP < 0.005.

One reflective activity, i.e. Balint attendee or clinical supervisor, was coded as 1 = the physician is either one or the other, and 0 = neither one nor the other.

Step 1: F(1;293) = 44.39^a; Step 2: F(5;289) = 14.28^a; R² = 13.2% for step 1 and R² = 19.8% for step 2, ∆R² = 6.6, P < 0.001.

Figure 1. Moderator effect of a reflective activity on the relationship between empathic concern and clinical empathy.

Spreng RN, McKinnon MC, Mar RA, Levine B. The Toronto empathy questionnaire: Scale development and initial validation of a factor-analytic solution to multiple empathy measures. J Pers Assess. 2009;91:62–71.

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