Empathy in senior year and first year medical students: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

BackgroundThe importance of fostering the development of empathy in undergraduate students is continuously emphasized in international recommendations for medical education. Paradoxically, some studies in the North-American context using self-reported measures have found that empathy declines during undergraduate medical training. Empathy is also known to be gender dependent- (highest for female medical students) and related to specialty preference - (higher in patient-oriented than technology-oriented specialties). This factor has not been studied in Portuguese medical schools.MethodsThis is a cross-sectional study of undergraduate medical students on self-rated measures of empathy collected at entrance and at the conclusion of the medical degree, and on the association of empathy measures with gender and specialty preferences in one medical school in Portugal. Empathy was assessed using the Portuguese adaptation of the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy-students version (JSPE-spv) among three cohorts of undergraduate medical students in the first (N = 356) and last (N = 120) year. The construct validity of JSPE-spv was cross-validated with Principal Component Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. Reliability was assessed using Cronbach' Alpha. Global JSPE-spv score differences were examined by year of medical school, gender and specialty preferences (people-oriented vs technology-oriented specialties).ResultsThe empathy scores of students in the final year were higher as compared to first year students (F (1,387) = 19.33, p < .001, ɳ2p = 0.48; π = 0.99). Female students had higher empathy scores than male students (F (1,387) = 8.82, p < .01, ɳ 2p = 0.23; π = 0.84). Significant differences in empathy were not found between the students who prefer people-oriented specialties compared to those who favor the technology-oriented specialties (F (1,387) = 2.44, p = .12, ɳ 2p = 0.06; π = 0.06).ConclusionsThis cross-sectional study in one medical school in Portugal showed that the empathy measures of senior year students were higher than the scores of freshmen. A longitudinal cohort study is needed to test variations in students' empathy measures throughout medical school.

Cross sectional assessment of empathy among undergraduates from a medical college

“…There is a need to further explore why most Asian students have almost similar scores but lower than the American studies. 8,20,21 The empathy scores at the entry point of medical school is much less than those found in US by Chen et al (115.5), Hojat et al (114.5) but similar to that from Iran (110.3). 8,11,14 The curriculum in this college is different in many respects from medical schools in US, Japan and Iran.…”

“…In this study there is significant difference (p ¼ 0.012) in empathy scores between male and female with later scoring more than male students (mean female students 106.5v/s male students 101.89, Standard deviation 19.901 & 16.164 respectively) (Table 4), which is in consonance with studies from US Portugal and Japan. 8,13,20 However the study from Iran did not find any significant difference though female students did have mean higher scores (105.6vs103.7). 23 The difference in this study from Iran could be due to varied proportion of female students to male students in both studies (22.13% vs70.16%).…”

Empathy predicting career choice in future physicians

“…in Japan, Korea [18,23] and Portugal [24] have shown an increase in empathy. Winseman, Malik, Morison, and Balkoski [25] reported that both personal and educational factors influence medical students' empathy in the course of their studies.…”

Evaluation of student empathy level during the first five years of medical education at ankara university

“…Previous studies showed that beside the decline of student empathy during their medical school years (Hojat et al, 2004;Chen et al, 2012;Shariat and Habibi 2013), greater levels of empathy has been also demonstrated in medical students in their final years (Kataoka et al, 2009;Roh et al, 2010;Magalhães et al, 2011). So, there is a need to study changes in student empathy during medical education and find out the reasons that affect the medical students' visions of the importance of human interactions and empathy in patient encounters.…”

“…Unsuitable learning environments, cynicism/loss of idealism (Hojat et al, 2004;Newton et al, 2008), distress (Neumann et al, 2011), hidden curriculum (Eikeland et al, 2014), negative role-models, a high volume of materials to learn, time pressure, patient factors and overreliance on computer-based diagnostic and therapeutic technology can affect the students and cause a decline in empathy. However, in one longitudinal study (Quince et al, 2011), no significant change was observed, and in some cross-sectional studies greater levels of empathy were observed in medical students in their final year (Kataoka et al, 2009;Roh et al, 2010;Magalhães et al, 2011).…”