Empathy in students of Kinesiology

Introduction: empathy is an important concept in the interaction between the Kinesiologist and the patient. Objective: to determine the levels of empathy in students of Kinesiology considering the variables course and gender from the School of Health Sciences, University of Atacama (Chile) in November 2018. Methods: exploratory and cross-sectional study. A sample of 191 students was included in the study. The Jefferson's Empathy scale was used. The median, quartile 1 and 3, inter-quartile difference and confidence interval of the median were estimated. The possible differences regarding empathy were studied using nonparametric tests (Mood Median). Results: there were differences in empathy in the course variable. Empathy was not different concerning gender variable. Conclusions: levels of empathy, along with the levels of interest showed differences between courses and there are no differentiation concerning empathy between genders.