The Impact of Meeting Patients with Neurological Disorders on Medical Student Empathy
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
The Impact of Meeting Patients with Neurological Disorders on Medical Student Empathy Catherine Eve Tisdale 1 & Asa C. Black Jr 2 & Sandip Jain 3 & Ervin Lowther 4 & Lee Madeline 4 & Chris Troup 5 & Thomas Nathaniel 2 & L. A. Fowler 2 Accepted: 1 October 2020 # International Association of Medical Science Educators 2020
Abstract Purpose Empathy tends to decline during medical education, typically beginning in the third year of medical school and often continuing throughout residency and the physician’s medical career. The purpose of this study was to determine if first year medical student empathy is affected by small group interactions with patients with neurological disorders, and to investigate if changes in empathy persisted over time. Materials and Methods Eighty first year medical students participating in a Neuroscience Module interacted with a variety of neurological patients in a small group informational session. Prior to the experience, participants completed the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy–Student (JSPE-S) version. After the experience, students completed a post-test JSPE-S questionnaire, and a final post-post-test JSPE-S questionnaire was completed 5 weeks later. Empathy scores were compared with a repeated measures MANOVA. The relationship between gender and empathy, and the effect of the age of the neurological patients on empathy scores were also examined. Results Empathy scores for seventy-one students who completed the JSPE-S questionnaires were analyzed. Students had significantly higher empathy immediately after the patient interaction experience, and the change in empathy was sustained over the course of 5 weeks (p = 0.015). The age of the neurological patients had a significant effect on empathy scores. There was no significant difference between empathy scores and gender. Conclusions This study supports the incorporation of a group patient interaction experience into the medical school curriculum as an inexpensive and practical method of enhancing medical student empathy in a non-clinical setting. Keywords Empathy . Affective empathy . Cognitive empathy . Undergraduate medical education . Medical school curriculum . Curriculum design . Curriculum intervention . Neuroscience . Biomedical sciences . Neurological disorder . Patient-centered care
Introduction
* Catherine Eve Tisdale [email protected] 1
University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville, Greenville, SC, USA
2
Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville, Greenville, SC, USA
3
Department of Medicine, University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville, Greenville, SC, USA
4
Department of Radiology, University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville, Greenville, SC, USA
5
Department of Pediatrics, University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville, Greenville, SC, USA
There are several different ways to define empathy—a concept that is frequently described in the literature as ambiguous and elusive. Some resea
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