Empathy among midwives at a referral hospital in Uganda

Background: Empathy is an essential component of a caring relationship and critical to the provision of quality midwifery care. An empathetic approach enables midwives to understand each client’s perspectives, and is therefore fundamentally important to the provider-client relationship and improved healthcare outcomes. Many lack the capacity to provide empathic care, though it can be taught and reinforced in midwifery education.

Objective: To assess the levels of empathy among midwives working on an Obstetrical and Gynecology unit in a Uganda referral hospital.

Methods: This was a cross sectional study that was conducted among 185 midwives at a referral hospital in Uganda. Empathy was assessed using the Jefferson Scale of Empathy for health professionals (JSE- HP). Item scores were summated to generate total scores. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize empathy scores and other continuous variables. Nominal variables were summarized using frequencies and percentages. Chi-square tests were conducted to determine whether empathy scores differed significantly for different categories of variables and statistical significance was considered at a p-value < 0.05.
Results: Participant empathy scores ranged from 32 to 121 with a mean of 93.6 (±14.93). Slightly over fifty percent (53.5%) of the participants had scores higher than the mean. scores compared to those who had low workload (χ2 = 3.750, p = 0.05).

Conclusion: The empathy level of midwives in this study was lower than medical and Dental students in other studies. An empathic culture in the Obstetrics & Gynecology Department is needed to enhance empathic care to clients and colleagues.