Evaluation of the relationship between burnout and EMPATHY levels of faculty of dentistry students

The aim of this study is to evaluate the burnout and empathy levels of dentistry faculty students, the relationship between them, and the effect of students' socio-demographic characteristics on these two variables. The sample of the descriptive and cross-sectional study consists of 363 students who accepted to participate in our study and filled out the forms completely, out of 416 students studying at the Faculty of Dentistry of Uşak University in 2020-2021.The data were obtained using the 'Socio-Demographic Information Form', the 'Maslach Burnout Inventory - Student Form' and the 'Jefferson Doctor Empathy Scale Student Version'. The data were transferred to the IBM SPSS 25 program and the analyzes were performed in the AMOS 23 program. Shapiro Wilk test, Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal Wallis test, Post Hoc Bonferroni test, Spearman correlation were used for statistical analysis. Analyzes showed that 17.1% of Uşak University Faculty of Dentistry students had high burnout and 20.1% had high empathy levels. It has been determined that some socio-demographic variables affect students' empathy and burnout. There was a positive statistically significant relationship between the 'taking perspective' sub-dimension of empathy and the 'emotional exhaustion' sub-dimension of burnout, and a negative statistically significant relationship between the 'personal achievement' sub-dimension of burnout. A statistically significant negative correlation was found between the 'standing in the patient's shoes' sub-dimension of empathy and the level of burnout and the 'emotional exhaustion' sub-dimension of burnout. (p<0.05) The burnout and empathy levels of the majority of the students were found to be moderate. It is thought that the development of new educational models aimed at increasing the empathy levels of students who are future dentists and reducing burnout levels may contribute to improving the quality of oral and dental health services.