BACKGROUND: Physician empathy is an effective therapeutic component of patient-physician communication. It is thus essential to develop and sustain it throughout medical school to equip the would be physicians with this attribute throughout their clinical careers. However, several studies have shown that empathy levels of medical students decline overtime.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the empathy score across medical school years of students in the University of the Philippines College of Medicine.

METHODOLOGY: First through fifth year medical students enrolled in the College of Medicine for the school year 2014 to 2015 and who consented to participate were included.

DESIGN: Analytical cross sectional study of medical students at the University of the Philippines College of Medicine in 2014.

DATA COLLECTION: The primary measure of empathy used was the Jefferson Scales of Empathy--Student Version (JSE-S), a 20-item psychometrically validated instrument measuring components of empathy among medical students in patient care situations.

RESULTS: Mean empathy scores significantly varied across year level, sex and age group (P<0.05). The significant difference in the adjusted mean empathy scores was seen between the first and third year levels (117.0 vs. 108.1 P<0.05) and first and fifth year levels (117.0 vs. 107.1 P=0.04). The mean empathy score of female medical students as compared to male medical students was higher (114.4 vs. 109.8 P=0.002). Difference in empathy scores were noted between the less than 22 and 25-27 age groups (115.2 vs. 104.5 P=0.006). While there was a note of decrease in the empathy scores among students who chose"technology- oriented"specialties from"people-oriented"specialties, the difference was not statistically significant. (112.2 vs 113.2 P=0.942).

CONCLUSION: Empathy scores of the medical students in the University of the Philippines College of Medicine declines across year levels.