The article deals with the problems of empathic abilities of foreign students and Kazakh students of Karaganda Medical University. Special attention is paid to the characteristics of empathy in different cultures, the definitions of which cover a wide range of emotional States, including caring for others and the desire to help them; to experience emotions that correspond to the emotions of another person; to distinguish what the other person thinks or feels. Empathy is needed to increase productivity, to develop competence in communication, to create deeper and personal relationships. Empathy can also be understood as a person’s emotional responsiveness to the experiences of another person, a response to the feelings of another, as well as empathy – a person’s experience of the same emotional States that the other is experiencing, on the basis of complete identification.