Nurturing virtues of the medical profession: does it enhance medical students’ empathy?

Abstract

ObjectivesTo examine if the empathy levels of first-year medical students are amenable to didactic interventions idealized to promote values inherent to medical professional identity. MethodsThis is a pretest-posttest study designed to assess the empathy levels of first-year medical students (n=166) comprising two consecutive classes of a Brazilian medical school, performed before and after a didactic intervention. Students attended a course based on values and virtues related to medical professional identity once a week over four months. Every didactic approach (interviews with patients and physicians, supervised visits to the hospital, and discussion of videotaped simulated consultations) was based on “real-world” situations and designed to promote awareness of the process of socialization. Students filled out the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (JSPE) on the first and last days of this course, and the pretest-posttest analysis was performed using the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test. ResultsThe mean pretest JSPE score was 117.9 (minimum 92, maximum 135) and increased to 121.3 after the intervention (minimum 101, maximum 137). The difference was significant (z=-5.2, p<.001.), with an effect size of 0.40. The observed increase was greater among students with lower initial JSPE scores. ConclusionsEmpathy is a fundamental tool used to achieve a successful physician-patient relationship, and it seems to permeate other virtues of a good physician. This study’s results suggest that medical students’ empathy may be amenable to early curricular interventions designed to promote a positive development of their professional identity, even when empathy is not central in discussion.

Character Strengths Profiles in Medical Professionals and Their Impact on Well-Being

“…The ‘explicit’ professionalism curriculum puts patients into the center and supports altruistic attitudes, but the ‘implicit’ or ‘hidden’ curriculum that is defined by the learning environment in which it takes place ( Hafferty and Franks, 1994 ) is often contrary, e.g., educators teaching opposite values by valuing appearance, formality, and conformity wrongly as ‘professional’ ( Brainard and Brislen, 2007 ; Karches and Sulmasy, 2016 ). However, medical students’ altruistic behavior and empathy seem to be susceptible ( Schweller et al, 2017 ; Sanjai and Gopichandran, 2018 ) and should be fostered by respective early curricular interventions during medical education.…”

The Educational Effects of a Pregnancy Simulation in Medical/Nursing Students and Professionals

“…There have been many studies utilizing JSPE score to assess empathy levels in healthcare students or professionals, although these have found mixed results. Systematic reviews have found that physician empathy appears to be an important aspect of patient and physician well-being, and targeted educational programs may significantly enhance the empathy levels of medical students and physicians [11–15]. However, other studies have demonstrated that brief interventions did not lead to significant increases in empathy [16, 17].…”

Exploring the use of virtues to facilitate identity construction among management students

“…For example, Seoane and colleagues’ (2016) National Institutes of Health study demonstrates that a simple in-class intervention (15 hours of content regarding the application of medical virtues in a clinical context) diminished the loss of empathy and “burnout” that accompany students’ journeys through medical school. Another recent study bolstered these results by demonstrating that a virtues-based pedagogic approach (through a mixture of in-class and real-world interventions) increased students’ empathy towards patients and, in doing so, enhanced their professional practice and developing identities ( Schweller, Ribeiro, Celeri, & de Carvalho-Filho, 2017 ).…”