Psychological tests to measure the effects of medical education on students’ interpersonal skills

Abstract

The consulting skills required of medical students and practitioners have been categorized into a number of specific skills, two of which are: students' ability to empathize with the patient; and ability to decode non-verbal cues given by the patient in the interview. Training programmes to improve students' consulting skills are usually evaluated using analysis of students' actual interview behaviours with patients. Broad psychological and personality tests have also been used to measure changes in students' interviewing skills, but have generally not been successful. The hypothesis is advanced that more specific tests of the skills of interviewing, such as non-verbal sensitivity and empathy, would detect changes in students' ability to display these skills. As part evaluation of a consulting skills training programme, clinical students completed psychological tests of empathy and non-verbal sensitivity. Subsequent comparisons between trained and control student groups revealed no clear pattern in test results. These data suggest that specific psychological tests of empathy and non-verbal sensitivity may be no more effective in detecting changes in students' interpersonal skills than global personality measures.

How Do Distress and Well-being Relate to Medical Student Empathy? A Multicenter Study

“…A number of methods to promote empathy have been proposed, including communication skills training,46,49,50,101 mentoring,2 lectures,49,50,102 personal and shared reflection,32–34,45,47,103–105 and promotion of physicians’ own wellness 103,106,107. Determining the effectiveness of these interventions requires the ability to measure empathy 46.…”

“…Determining the effectiveness of these interventions requires the ability to measure empathy 46. Although observation,49,108 response to clinical vignettes, patient assessment,109 validated survey instruments,4,18,49,50,109–111 and self-ratings have all been used to measure empathy, each of these approaches has limitations. In this study, we used a validated survey tool to measure empathy.…”

“…Students in this survey were from 3 very different medical school environments, lending generalizability to most types of institutions in the United States. Finally, the survey instruments used were validated tools that have been widely used in other samples of MSs and physicians in training, which provides a context for our findings 17,18,35,38,49,50,80…”

“…We included the IRI subscales which measure the cognitive (perspective-taking subscale) and emotive (empathetic concern subscale) domains of empathy in this survey. The IRI subscales have been shown to be reliable and reproducible measures of sensitivity to views and feelings of others,17,18,36,37,48 and have been used in a wide variety of research settings, including previous studies of physicians and MSs 17,18,38,48–50. Student scores on the IRI were compared to normative samples, which are published separately by gender 36…”

Maintaining empathy in medical school: It is possible

“…Such studies suggest that focused educational interventions may be successful at nurturing undergraduate medical students' empathy. (Evans et al, 1989, Henry-Tillman et al, 2002, Shapiro et al, 2004, Feighny et al, 1995, Hull et al, 2001 …”