Gender differences in the level of empathy in maternal care and associated factors, among midwifery students, hareri colleges of midwifery, eastern ethiopia

Empathy is the most important & the key cornerstone in genuine human relationships but the least recognized part as nursing and midwifery care. Health professional including midwives lack communication skill that enable them to the bottom of the problems of their patients and address their needs. Being supportive, compassionate, and caring are fundamentally important roles of an effective midwife. This study investigated gender difference in level of empathy and associated factors among midwifery students, in Hareri colleges of midwifery, Eastern Ethiopia. Facility based comparative cross-sectional study design was used with both qualitative and quantitative data from Feb.1-April 6 / 2012 on a sample of 326 midwifery students. A self-administered questionnaire was used and stratified and simple random sampling technique was used to select midwifery students for quantitative method and purposive sampling techniques were used to select midwifery students for the FGD by considering both the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Bivariate and multivariable logistic regression model, t-test, one way ANOVA, was used to compare level of empathy by independent variables. Result showed that overall 50.94% have had high level of empathy with the mean empathy score of 101.63; and about 20 independent factors were associated with high level of empathy. But, based on gender, 18 for female and 4 independent variable for male had association with empathy in bivariate logistic regression. Significance association were found in standing in patient shoe’s by gender, females were significantly different and had high empathy than male (COR= 2.718, 95% CI [1.444, 5.118]), P=0.002 but there was no significant different were found in age groups, gender and educational level by these three classifications.