Medical students’ empathy and attitudes towards professionalism: Relationship with personality, specialty preference and medical programme

Abstract

Background Existing research has suggested that self-reported empathy in medical students is moderated by personality traits and diverse demographic and educational factors including age, gender, nationality, career aspirations, as well as year of curriculum. It is unclear how empathy, personality, and background factors might impact on students’ attitudes towards professionalism in medicine. Methods A cross-sectional questionnaire-based study was conducted in first and final year medical students at an Irish medical school. The following instruments were administered: (a) Jefferson Scale of Empathy; (b) NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI-3); (c) Attitudes towards Professionalism Scale. Demographic and educational variables were also measured. Descriptive and correlational analysis was conducted to examine the association between empathy, personality, professionalism-related attitudes and additional measures. Regression analysis was used to examine determinants of attitudes towards professional behaviour. Results Both selected NEO-FFI personality traits and empathy were independently associated with distinct categories of professional behaviour. Specifically, Openness to Experience was associated with higher empathy scores, and higher ‘Social responsibility’. Extraversion was linked with higher scores on the “Personal characteristics” and “Interactions with team” categories, while Conscientiousness was also positively associated with “Personal characteristics”. In agreement with previous studies, the personality traits most associated empathy were Agreeableness and Openness to Experience. Empathy did not vary according to programme year or career specialty preference. Conclusions This study is the first to show that empathy and personality factors may act as determinants of students’ attitudes towards medical professionalism in a manner which is dependent upon category of professional behaviour.

Survey of doctors’ perception of professional values

“…The existence of two separate dimensions is in accordance with a previous study conducted in an Irish medical school sample that showed low correlations between empathy and professionalism measures [20]. Montgomery, in a systematic review of the literature to define humanism in the practice of medicine, uses a model centred on the interaction between heart and mind in which the heart represents the emotive domains of empathy, compassion and connectedness while the head represents the cognitive domains of knowledge [21].…”

Family Loneliness: Its Effects in the Development of Empathy, Teamwork and Lifelong Learning Abilities in Medical Students

“…The influence of individual and environmental factors in the acquisition and development of these three competences has been studied extensively in the last years. Individual factors have been mainly associated with attitudinal abilities ( Hojat and Zuckerman, 2008 ; O’Tuathaigh et al, 2019 ), while the environment has usually been associated with certain academic and clinical settings where professional training of medical students and physicians-in-training is performed ( Hafferty and O’Donnell, 2015 ; San-Martín et al, 2016 ). In fact, a hierarchical environment has been associated with a poor development of teamwork abilities in medicine in comparison with nursing ( Hojat et al, 1997 , 2003 ; San-Martín et al, 2017 ; Tuirán-Gutiérrez et al, 2019 ; Berduzco-Torres et al, 2020 ).…”

Effectiveness of a standard clinical training program in new graduate nurses’ competencies in Vietnam: A quasi-experimental longitudinal study with a difference-in-differences design

“…In three of the 25 competencies (“professional development,” “legal compliance,” and “rapport with patients”), intermediate effects of the standard clinical training were detected, while no effect was detected in another three competencies (“medical equipment management,” “data collection,” and “proper care delivery”). All the three competencies in which intermediate effects were detected are related to personal and professional values that are generally difficult to change [ 34 , 35 ] and could change when systematic education is involved [ 36 , 37 ]. Thus, the standard clinical training program might have successfully enabled new graduate nurses to increase their competencies related to personal and profession values by providing valuable opportunities to cultivate and further change new graduate nurses’ mindsets on nursing professionalism.…”