Introduction:

Empathy is an important feature for the relationship between the nursing professional and the patient, and influences the recovery of his/her health status. Empathic training in nursing students must be assumed by the Nursing schools.

Objective:

To assess empathy levels in nursing students.

Methods:

Nonexperimental and cross-sectional study. Empathy levels were measured in nursing students from Rafael Núñez University Corporation (Cartagena, Colombia), from February to March 2017, using the Jefferson Medical Empathy Scale (S), validated and adapted for Colombia by expert criteria. The sample: n=325; population N=468 (69.44%). Mean and standard deviation were estimated in two factors: courses and gender. A bifactor analysis of variance was used. The observed growth was measured and compared with the potential growth.

Results:

The data had a normal distribution and were homogeneous, since the variance of the errors was constant. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Levene tests were not significant. Cronbach's alpha was satisfactory. There were no significant differences between courses or genders. R2 values of empathic growth are low in empathy and its components.

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