Empathy in Chinese medical students: psychometric characteristics and differences by gender and year of medical education

Abstract

BackgroundIn recent years in China, the tense physician-patient relationship has been an outstanding problem. Empathy is one of the fundamental factors enhancing the therapeutic effects of physician-patient relationships and is significantly associated with clinical and academic performance among students.MethodsThis cross-sectional study used the JSPE-S (The Student Version of the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy) to assess 902 medical students from 1st year to 4th year at China Medical University. The reliability of the questionnaire was assessed by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. We performed an exploratory factor analysis to evaluate the construct validity of the JSPE-S. Group comparisons of empathy scores were conducted via the t-test and one-way ANOVA. Statistic analysis was performed by SPSS 13.0.ResultsThe Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.83. The three factors emerging in the factor analysis of the JSPE-S are “perspective taking”, “compassionate care” and “ability to stand in patients’ shoes”, which accounted for 48.00%. The mean empathy score was 109.60. The empathy score of medical students had significant differences between different genders (p < 0.05) and academic year level (p < 0.05).ConclusionsThis study provided support for the validity and reliability of the Chinese translated version of the JSPE-S for medical students. Early exposure to clinical training and a curriculum for professional competencies help to enhance the empathy of medical students. We suggest that the curriculum within Chinese medical schools include more teaching on empathy and communicational skills.

Is the Empathy Level of Medical Students at KAU Changeable along their Study Years? What is behind this Change?

“…As they progress in their study, they develop their study skills and exposure to different type of patients and their empathy level with them also grow. In accordance to our study, medical students in China, Korean, Kuwait and Bangladeshi [5,6,8,10] having increased level of empathy in clinical year than in basic years. This was in disagreement with what was reported about American and Iranian medical students who having increase level of empathy in basics year comparing to the clinical years.…”

“…Education and Health Careat Jefferson Medical College, to measure the level of empathy among physicians and other health professionals [3].The hypothesis that empathy declines as students' progress through medical school has previously investigated in many Asian countries like Japan [4], South Korea [5], China [6], Iran [7], Bangladesh [8] and India [9], some Arabic countries as Kuwait [10], as well as other countries like UK [11], USA [12], Brazil [13] and German [14] by using the student version of Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (JSPE). To our knowledge, the empathy with patients among the Saudi medical students has not been studied till now.…”

Empathy, Components of Empathy and Curricular Evaluation of the Faculty of Dentistry, Evangelical University of El Salvador

“…It has been demonstrated 22 that there is gender variability in relation to empathy in a study in 18 dental schools in Latin America. As a consequence, it is not possible to state categorically that women are more empathetic than men in all populations studied, despite the fact that authors have observed the opposite [8,[23][24][25][26][27].…”

“…Empathy is associated with the understanding that patients' experiences and feelings are mutually interacting factors in the development of an entity [7,8]. Measurements of empathy using different instruments have not been able to verify predictive validity; however, these measurements have a probative effect for the diagnosis of empathy in the formation of medical professionals [9][10][11].…”

Study on Empathy among Undergraduate Students of the Medical Profession in Nepal

“…Empathy is generally accepted as a desirable trait in medics and there are increasing calls to assess the level of empathy at some point during medical school, or prior to admission [10] [11] [12]. Indeed medically competence, socially responsible and emotionally empathetic, is some prominent attribute for incumbent entering the medical profession [2] [13] [14].…”