Role of Resilience in Predicting and Empathy Dimensions in Dental Students: A Cross-Sectional Design.

Ecological empathy is a complex and multifaceted attribute, a highly relevant human factor in health care. This study aimed to determine the association between individual resilience and empathy in dental students and to assess whether resilience predicted empathy and its dimensions. The study employed a quantitative and descriptive cross-sectional design. The sample, consisting of 397 students from the first to the seventh year of dental surgery, was measured on empathy and resilience. Multiple regression analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, invariance analysis, and methods were employed to ensure the reliability of our measurements. It was established that the measurements of resilience and empathy were valid and reliable in the studied population. Ecological resilience increased the levels of the perspective adoption dimension, and adaptive resilience raised the compassionate threshold. The engineering resilience dimension was not associated with any of the empathy dimensions. While resilience may not fully explain empathy variability, it remains a personal attribute related to empathy. Further investigation of the role of resilience in empathy and its components is required since improving healthcare professionals' empathy has positive implications for the quality of care and patient satisfaction.