Empathy, Compassion and Quality of Life in Nursing and Medical Students

Empathy is experiencing emotions that match another person's emotions and discerning what another person is thinking or feeling. Compassion consists of three major requirements: person must feel that troubles that evoke their feelings are serious, person requires that sufferers' troubles are not self-inflicted, and the person must be able to picture themselves with the same problems. WHO defines Quality of Life as individuals' perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns. The present research aims to find the difference between nursing students and medical students with respect to empathy, compassion, and quality of life (viz., physical health, psychological health, social relationships and environment). Another objective of the study is to examine the relationship between empathy, compassion, and quality of life among nursing students and medical students. The study adopts a between groups design as well as a correlational design. Through purposive sampling, data was collected from 75 Nursing and 75 Medical Students, all of whom were female, by administering the tools -Measure of Emotional Empathy, Compassionate love for Humanity Scale and WHO -Quality of Life Brief. Results showed that there is a difference between nursing students and medical students in empathy, compassion, quality of life and its dimensions of physical health and environment. Among nursing students, empathy was positively correlated with quality of life, whereas among medical students, empathy was negatively correlated with quality of life. These findings are relevant with respect to patients' experiences in hospitals and in the clinicianpatient relationship.