An exploration of changes in cognitive and emotional empathy among medical students in the Caribbean

Abstract

Objectives:This study explored the empathy profile of students across five years of medical training. In addition the study examined whether the Jefferson Scale for Physician Empathy correlated with a measure of cognitive empathy, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test and a measure of affective empathy, the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire.Methods:The study was a comparative cross-sectional design at one Caribbean medical school. Students were contacted in class, participation was voluntary and empathy was assessed using all three instruments Descriptive statistics were calculated and differences between groups evaluated using non-parametric tests.Results:Overall 669 students participated (response rate, 67%). There was a significant correlation between the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy and the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (P = 0.48), both scales indicating a decline in medical student empathy scores over time. There was, however, little correlation between scores from the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test and the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy. Female students demonstrated significantly higher scores on all three measures.Conclusions:Medical students’ lower empathy scores during their final years of training appear to be due to a change in the affective component of empathy. These findings may reflect an adaptive neurobiological response to the stressors associated with encountering new clinical situations. Attention should be paid not only to providing empathy training for students but also to teaching strategies for improved cognitive processing capacity when they are encountering new and challenging circumstances.

The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire: Reliability and Validity in a Nationwide Sample of Greek Teachers

“…In the other one, a study on Korean graduate students (Han 2016), the researchers claimed that according to the confirmatory factor analysis there lacked a goodness of fit in the single factor model, while according to the exploratory factor analysis the single factor was suggested. In our study, the internal consistency reliability of the TEQ was satisfactory at α = 0.72, comparable to the one reported by the manufacturers (Spreng et al 2009) and by other researchers (Baldner and McGinley 2014;Robinson and Wright 2013;Celik et al 2013;Totan et al 2012;Baltes , and Miu 2014;Youssef et al 2014). Taking into account that TEQ is scored on a scale from 0 to 4, the mean score 3.2 (SD = 0.4) found in our study suggests that our sample reported rather high levels of empathy or, in any case, higher than the mean score reported in the original questionnaire (Spreng et al 2009).…”

“…Specifically, women scored higher in the TEQ, supporting similar findings that females tend to exhibit higher empathy than males (Spreng et al 2009;Totan et al 2012;Baltes , and Miu 2014;Youssef et al 2014;Toussaint and Webb 2005;Turnage et al 2012). These sex differences do not emerge in all empathy studies however, prompting Baldner and McGinley (Baldner and McGinley 2014) to state that self-report measures of empathy do not vastly differentiate among genders.…”

“…It has proven to be a reliable measure of empathy for different age groups with satisfactory psychometric properties: adolescents (Brewer and Kerslake 2015), university students (Baldner and McGinley 2014;Celik et al 2013;Totan et al 2012;Youssef et al 2014) and adults (Cusi et al 2011;Lamothe et al 2014;Parlar et al 2014;Robinson and Wright 2013;Lelorain et al 2013). The TEQ has also been used in clinical populations assessing the empathetic responding of adults with major depressive disorder (Cusi et al 2011) and post-traumatic stress disorder (Parlar et al 2014), and in individuals who experienced crisis episodes (Robinson and Wright 2013).…”

“…The TEQ has been used in studies conducted in a number of different countries, such as Canada (Cusi et al 2011;Lamothe et al 2014;Parlar et al 2014), United Kingdom (Brewer and Kerslake 2015;Robinson and Wright 2013), USA (Baldner and McGinley 2014), France (Lelorain et al 2013), Turkey (Celik et al 2013;Totan et al 2012), Romania (Miu and Balteş 2012;Baltes , and Miu 2014) and Trinidad and Tobago (Youssef et al 2014). It has proven to be a reliable measure of empathy for different age groups with satisfactory psychometric properties: adolescents (Brewer and Kerslake 2015), university students (Baldner and McGinley 2014;Celik et al 2013;Totan et al 2012;Youssef et al 2014) and adults (Cusi et al 2011;Lamothe et al 2014;Parlar et al 2014;Robinson and Wright 2013;Lelorain et al 2013).…”

The relationship between subjective well-being and empathy among Turkish medical students

“…Most of the previous studies revealed similar results (Hojat et al 2002a;Hojat et al 2002b;Hojat et al 2002c;Hojat et al 2005;Kliszcz et al 2006;Kataoka et al 2009;Quince at al. 2011;Tavakol et al 2011;Chen et al 2012;Hasan et al 2013;Wen et al 2013;Leombruni et al 2014;Youssef et al 2014;Hojat & Gonnella 2015). On the other hand some studies did not find any difference among empathy levels of male and female students (Rahimi-Madiseh et al 2010;Roh et al 2010;Tavakol et al 2011;Williams et al 2015).…”