Abstract overview:
Empathy as a phenomenon lacks a specific definition, but at the same time, empathy is multidimensional, with cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and moral components. Empathy plays an important role in midwifery, from both the woman's and the midwife's perspective. The Midwifery Empathy Scale (MES) was developed to assess the empathy levels of midwives and midwifery students.

Aims and objectives:
The purpose of this study was the validation of the MES for an Estonian sample. The study sample (n = 163) consisted of midwives working in Estonia completed the questionnaire of the MES.

Methods:
Psychometric measurements performed included standard deviation (SD), p-value, and factor analysis, which were used as principal components of the analysis. Statistical analysis was performed with the help of SPSS statistics version 26.

Results:
The exploratory factor analysis on the 25 items of MES revealed seven orthogonal factors. KMO measure of sample adequacy = 0.615 and Bartlett’s test of sphericity = 1043.802., Cronbach’s alpha was found to be 0.571 which indicates acceptable overall internal consistency of the MES. Based on the findings, it can be stated that the level of empathy of Estonian midwives is high, and their caring behavior is good. According to the results obtained in this study, the level of empathy positively influences caring behavior in maternity care.

Conclusion:
This study shows that the Estonian version of the MES is a reliable instrument for evaluating the empathy levels of midwives.