Empathy has an important role in the patient-clinician relationship. However, there is a risk of an emotional overabundance, which can lead to a burnout and exhaustion. The nature of its relationship is yet not clear. This study aims to investigate the relationship between empathy and burnout in dental undergraduate students. A systematic review was carried out in accordance with Preferred Reporting Items for Systemic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) using electronic searches on electronic databases: PubMed (PMC), Taylor and Francis, Google Scholar and EBSCO. The databases were examined for studies that were published in English language from 2012 to 2022. There were 2375 articles in total. The studies that only assessed empathy or burnout and targeted other than dental cohorts were excluded from the list. Any studies that were not in English language and had been published before 2012 were also excluded. As a result, only 2 studies were selected for further analysis. Based on this review it can be assumed that the level of burnout depends on the level of empathy in dental cohort students; low empathy can predict high burnout. However, further research is necessary to confirm this relationship.
Anishchuk et al. (Fri,) studied this question.