Perceived Stress and Perceived Empathy Reported by Athletic Training Students

Context: Previous research has been conducted on perceived stress related to perceived empathy within the medical field. About 40% of nurses have self reported occupational burnout, 25% of physicians have multiple factors related to burnout, and over half of psychologists have admitted that they practiced while being distressed to the point of affecting their clinical practice.1,1316 However, there is limited research on how perceived stress affects empathy within athletic training students.Objective: To examine the perception of stress and the level of empathy towards patients by athletic training students.Design: Case report.Setting: Online survey.Participants: Seventeen professional level athletic training students ranging from first year undergraduate to second year graduate students in the state of Virginia.Data Collection: An online survey was conducted containing 10 questions on perceived stress and 20 questions on perceived empathy measured in a 5 point Likert Scale (0=never, 1=almost never, 2=sometimes, 3=fairly often, 4=very often).Analysis: The correlation between perceived stress and perceived empathy was 0.52. The mean score for perceived stress was 44.47±5.30. The mean score for perceived empathy was 21.24±3.25.Conclusion: There was a weak correlation between the relationship of perceived stress levels and perceived empathy reported by athletic training students. There was no significant difference in perceived stress scores in October compared to November (t16=-1.75, p=0.10). There was no significant difference in perceived empathy scores in October compared to November (t16=1.05, p=0.31). These results suggest that professional level athletic training students have better stress management technique than we previously believed.Keywords: Burnout, health care professionals, coping, work pressureWord Count: 262