Evaluating empathy level amongst the dental students using jefferson scale of physician empathy- health professional students.

BACKGROUND: Empathy is described as one's ability to perceive and apprehend another person's feelings, situation, emotions, and problems as their own. Empathetic behavior increases patients' satisfaction, reduces discomfort, and helps with patient's satisfaction. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the psychometric properties of the Jefferson Empathy Scale and compare the measure of invariance within genders and amongst the public and private sector dental students. METHOD: This cross-sectional study utilized JSE-HPS version for research purpose. An exploratory factor analysis was performed to detect underlying factors. Reliability of the study tool was evaluated using Cronbach alpha test. Mann Whitney U test was used to compare the differences in scores between genders and among public and private university students while Student's t analysis compared the scores according to different domains. The level of significance was ≤ 0.05. RESULTS: Females demonstrated higher empathy levels (88.52 ± 14.19) along with private institute students (88.46 ± 13.98). Perspective taking and compassionate care domain was also scored highest by the females (31.73 ± 6.49 & 29.31 ± 6.22) and among second year students (33.30 ± 7.11 & 30.50 ± 7.16). PCA analysis extracted 4 factors namely (i) Health-care-provider's sense of humor contributed to improved outcome (ii) Health-care provider's understanding of patients' feelings and of their families influences treatment outcomes (iii) Understanding body language is as important as verbal communication and (iv) Patients feel better when their feelings are understood, which accounted for the 59.51% of the total variance. CONCLUSION: The findings revealed that students from private institute and females demonstrated higher empathy score. Moreover, the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE) was found to be a reliable and validated tool for assessment of empathy in our sample population.

Online teaching experience of the healthcare faculty during the pandemic: A cross sectional analysis.

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 pandemic had disrupted the teaching in most of the educational institutes worldwide. It has tested the readiness of educational institutes in their ability to deal with crisis. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to determine the perception of health sciences faculty toward online education during the period of pandemic in Pakistan. METHODS: This cross-sectional research determined the perception using online survey which had been taken from the study conducted by Almahasees et al. Questions related to faculty's perception regarding IT skills, online classes taking more effort than on-campus learning, online platforms having adequate tools to facilitate teaching. Data was analyzed using SPSS. Statistical tests comprised of descriptive statistics and Kruskal-Walli's test. RESULTS: From a total of 318 participants, there were 234 females and 84 males. A statistically significant association was identified between field of specialization and competency to teach online (p = 0.022). Faculty stated that more efforts were required to teach online (p <  0.001). Most of the tutors reported virtual sessions helped improved the interaction with their students (p <  0.001). Most of the time faculty had to prompt students to complete their assignments on time (p <  0.001). Many of the faculty members disagreed that delivering virtual sessions from home was quite ineffective (p = 0.221) and reported experiencing distractions (p <  0.001). CONCLUSION: This study showed that online learning proved less effective than face-to-face learning. The main drawback of distance learning was the lack of teacher-student interaction. Online learning promotes student-centered learning and could be applied in situations of crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Impact of COVID-19 on the self-esteem, psychological and dental esthetics of dental students.

BACKGROUND: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has badly affected the mental health, quality of life, and self-esteem of students worldwide. OBJECTIVE: The current study aimed to evaluate the psychological impact and self-esteem of dental students using Rosenberg self-esteem scale and PIDAQ during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHOD: This cross-sectional research was conducted amongst the dental students studying at various dental colleges in Karachi, Pakistan from January to May 2022. Evaluation of psychological aspect and self-esteem of students was carried out using "Psychosocial Impact of Dental Aesthetics Questionnaire (PIDAQ)", and "Rosenberg self-esteem scale" as perceived by students during the pandemic. For data analysis SPSS v24 was used. Data analysis comprised of descriptive analysis, Spearman correlation, One-way Anova and Linear regression. The level of significance of p value was less than 0.05. RESULTS: Overall 332 students participated, among which there were 181 females (54.5%), 151 males (45.5%). Dental self-confidence showed a negative relationship with social influence, psychological effect, and aesthetic concern, while it was positively linked with self-esteem during the pandemic. Social impact demonstrated association with psychological impact, aesthetic concern, and self-esteem, while it was negatively correlated with dental confidence. Rosenberg score showed positive correlation with all the variables. Statistically significant association was identified for variables when compared with gender. Regression analysis indicated association of age with dental confidence and RSS, while gender with social influence. CONCLUSION: The pandemic, aside from affecting the health of individuals worldwide, also badly affected the well-being, mental health, and self-esteem of the dental students. Dental aesthetics plays a crucial role in the mental wellbeing and self-esteem of the students.

Post COVID-19 pandemic assessment of quality of life of dental students using the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire.

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 bitterly jolted the lives of masses around the globe, and affected the physical, mental, health, and quality of life of majority of individuals. OBJECTIVE: The aim of the study was to assess the quality of life of dental students of public and private colleges and those residing in college accommodation and own home using the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted amongst 402 dental students of a private and public university. Students' t-test was used to compare the data. Relationship between gender, institute and accommodation (college accommodation or own home) was assessed by multiple linear regression. P-value of < 0.05 was taken significant. RESULTS: The participants rated their quality of life to be good (mean Score 3.99±SD 0.93) during the post COVID-19 pandemic, while satisfaction with health was neutral to satisfactory (mean Score 3.77±SD 0.87). A significant difference regarding physical health and social relationship domains was observed between the private and public university students. Significant differences in all domains of QOL was also reported among students living in own homes versus those students utilizing college accommodation. CONCLUSION: The post COVID-19 quality of life of dental students in both private and public institutes differed with respect to physical and environmental domains. The difference was more significant among the student living in college accommodation than those living at home, which underscores that effort should be made to facilitate the students to improve their the quality of life post pandemic so that they may be more focused on studies and perform better.