TY - JOUR
T1 - Association of Medical Student Characteristics and Empathy After a Communication Workshop
AU - Dorough, Ramona Jewel Maria
AU - Adamuti-Trache, Maria
AU - Siropaides, Caitlin Holt
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.
PY - 2021/11
Y1 - 2021/11
N2 - Medical education values patient-centered communication skills of responding to patient's emotions, however, guidance is limited on how to provide a well-rounded curriculum. This study examines the effect of a 90-minute communication workshop on the level of empathy of the 116 medical students who participated in the workshop. We used three psychometric categories from the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE) as dependent variables. We conducted mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA) analyses to determine the change in empathy scores after the workshop, the main effects for gender and medical specialty, and their interaction with time. We found an increase in perspective taking and compassionate care scales, although no changes on walking in patients’ shoes scale. Female and people-oriented specialty students scored higher on all scales. Some gender-specialty groups showed an empathy decrease: people-oriented specialty females on compassionate care scale and people-oriented and other specialty males on walking in patients’ shoes scale. We concluded that communication training requires a multidimensional approach to target various areas of building empathy. Standardization of training should be embedded with empathy development within medical education curriculum.
AB - Medical education values patient-centered communication skills of responding to patient's emotions, however, guidance is limited on how to provide a well-rounded curriculum. This study examines the effect of a 90-minute communication workshop on the level of empathy of the 116 medical students who participated in the workshop. We used three psychometric categories from the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE) as dependent variables. We conducted mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA) analyses to determine the change in empathy scores after the workshop, the main effects for gender and medical specialty, and their interaction with time. We found an increase in perspective taking and compassionate care scales, although no changes on walking in patients’ shoes scale. Female and people-oriented specialty students scored higher on all scales. Some gender-specialty groups showed an empathy decrease: people-oriented specialty females on compassionate care scale and people-oriented and other specialty males on walking in patients’ shoes scale. We concluded that communication training requires a multidimensional approach to target various areas of building empathy. Standardization of training should be embedded with empathy development within medical education curriculum.
KW - clinician–patient relationship
KW - communication
KW - education
KW - empathy
KW - interprofessional communication
KW - interprofessional education
KW - medical education
KW - patient/relationship-centered skills
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85121319371&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85121319371&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/23743735211065273
DO - 10.1177/23743735211065273
M3 - Article
C2 - 34926804
AN - SCOPUS:85121319371
SN - 2374-3735
VL - 8
JO - Journal of Patient Experience
JF - Journal of Patient Experience
ER -