Empathy as related to gender, age, race and ethnicity, academic background and career interest: A nationwide study of osteopathic medical students in the United States

Abstract

Context:Research on associations between medical student empathy and demographics, academic background and career interest is limited, lacks representative samples and suffers from single institutional features. This study was designed to fill the gap by examining associations between empathy in patient care, and gender, age, race and ethnicity, academic background and career interest in nationwide, multi-institutional samples of medical students in the United States and to provide more definitive answers regarding the aforementioned associations, with more confidence in the internal and external validity of the findings. Methods: Four nationwide samples participated in this study (n = 10 751). Samples 1, 2, 3 and 4 included 3616 first-year, 2764 second-year, 2413 third-year and 1958 fourth-year students who completed a web-based survey at the end of the 2017-2018 academic year. The survey included questions on demographics, academic background and career interest, the Jefferson Scale of Empathy, and the Infrequency Scale of the Zuckerman-Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire to control for the effect of 'good impression' response bias. Results: Statistically significant and practically important associations were found between empathy scores and gender (in favour of women), race and ethnicity (in favour of African-American and Hispanic/Latino/Spanish), academic background (in favour of 'Social and Behavioural Sciences' and 'Arts and Humanities' in Samples 1and 2) and career interest (in favour of 'People-Oriented' and 'Psychiatry' specialties). Conclusions:Special features of this study (eg, nationwide representative samples, use of a validated instrument for measuring empathy in patient care, statistical control for the effect of 'good impression' response bias, and consistency of findings in different samples from multiple institutions) provide more definitive answers to the issue of correlates of empathy in medical students and increase our confidence in the validity, reliability and generalisability of the results. Findings have implications for career counselling and targeting students who need more guidance to enhance their empathic orientation.

A Quantitative Evaluation of Empathy Using JSE-S Tool, Before and After a Medical Humanities Module, Amongst First-year Medical Students in Nepal

“…Our results also concur with those of previous studies regarding the association of empathy with gender and speciality preference. The nding of higher Pre-module empathy scores for female students, although not statistically signi cant in our study, was similar to that seen in a large study based in the United States of America amongst osteopathic medicine students (38).…”

“…Future Speciality is categorized into three broad groups: 'People-Oriented' which includes internal medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics-gynecology, family medicine, and psychiatry; 'Technology and Procedure-Oriented' which includes surgery, neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, and public health; and 'Undecided', for students unable to identify a future speciality. This broad grouping of speciality classi cation has been used in previous empathy studies (38).…”

Non-Academic Factors Influencing the Development of Empathy in Undergraduate Nursing Students: a Cross-sectional Study

“…Regarding possible individual factors in uencing the development of empathy in healthcare professions, ndings from a large number of studies suggest that women are often more empathic than men, obtaining higher scores in empathy measures [15,16]. These ndings are in consonance with others performed in general population where women have shown better indicators in neurological measures related to empathy [17].…”

“…Certain genetic predisposition, evolutionary underpinnings, and interpersonal styles, but also social interactions have been described as possible explanations for such gender differences in empathic responses [18]. In medical students, personality [19], personal motivation for studying medicine [20], and career interest [15] have also been described as other in uencing factors in the development of empathy. In relation with the in uence that environment has in the development of empathy, an increasing number of studies have reported evidence supporting its in uence on empathy.…”

Attitudes toward osteopathic medicine scale: development and psychometrics

“…27 This scale was previously used with medical students to detect and control for the tendency to make "good impression" responses, 12,28 and in POMEE-Phase I. 13,[29][30][31]…”