Introduction: Little is known about associations of
attitudes of medical students towards people with
disabilities and their life satisfaction and empathy.
Purpose: To assess the social perception of people
with disabilities by medical students.
Materials and methods: The present study
interviewed 451 medical students of the Medical
University of Białystok regarding their perceptions
of people with disabilities, especially in light of
their own satisfaction with life and empathy. We
used the following questionnaires: the original
questionnaire about attitudes towards people with
disabilities, The Satisfaction with Life Scale
(SWLS), and Empathy Understanding
Questionnaire (KRE).
Results: Attitudes towards people with disabilities
people were generally positive. Almost 40% of
respondents expressed a willingness to help for
people with disabilities. In general, disabled people
do not have full access to all fields of social
(63.4%) and professional (63.2%) life. At the same
time, disabled people tend to marry (84.9%), have
children (82.1%), work (88.2%), and drive cars
(76.1%). Respondents were convinced that contact
with a disabled person teaches ways to help others
(42.1%), and in fact 58.6% of respondents reported
having decided to participate with helping the
disabled. The average life satisfaction of the
students was 22.7 ± 5.3 which indicates that the
respondents are satisfied with their lives. The
empathy level of respondents was 66.97 points ±
2.98, which indicates average level of empathy.
Conclusions: This study shows that students’
perception of people with disabilities depends upon
how the students viewed disabled people’s, life
satisfaction and empathy.