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Searching for the erosion of empathy in medical undergraduate students: a longitudinal study

OBJECTIVE: To analyse the trajectory of empathy throughout the degree programme of medicine in a Spanish school of medicine. DESIGN: Longitudinal, prospective 5-year study, between October 2014 and June 2019. SETTING: Students from a Spanish university of medicine. PARTICIPANTS: Two voluntary cohort...

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Autores principales: Blanco, José Manuel, Caballero, Fernando, Álvarez, Santiago, Plans, Mercedes, Monge, Diana
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BMJ Publishing Group 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7780525/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33384394
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-041810
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author Blanco, José Manuel
Caballero, Fernando
Álvarez, Santiago
Plans, Mercedes
Monge, Diana
author_facet Blanco, José Manuel
Caballero, Fernando
Álvarez, Santiago
Plans, Mercedes
Monge, Diana
author_sort Blanco, José Manuel
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVE: To analyse the trajectory of empathy throughout the degree programme of medicine in a Spanish school of medicine. DESIGN: Longitudinal, prospective 5-year study, between October 2014 and June 2019. SETTING: Students from a Spanish university of medicine. PARTICIPANTS: Two voluntary cohorts of undergraduate medical students from two different school years were invited to participate (n=135 (cohort 1, C1) and 106 (cohort 2, C2) per school year). Finally, a total number of 174 students (102 (C1, 71.6% women) and 72 (C2, 70.8% women) students, respectively) were monitored for 5 years. Each cohort was divided in two subcohorts of paired and unpaired students that were analysed to check possible social desirability bias. PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURE: The Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE). RESULTS: The cohort of 102 students (C1) monitored between their first and fifth years of study (71.6% women) showed an improvement among paired women of 2.15 points in total JSE score (p=0.01) and 2.39 points in cognitive empathy (p=0.01); in the unpaired female cohort the increase was of 2.32 points (cognitive empathy) (p=0.02). The cohort of 72 students (C2) monitored between their second and sixth years of study (70.8% women) displayed a cognitive empathy increase of 2.32 points (p=0.04) in the paired group of women. There were no significant differences between paired and unpaired results for either cohort. Empathy scores among men did not decrease. CONCLUSIONS: The empathy of medical students at our school did not decline along grade years. In fact, it improved slightly, particularly cognitive empathy, among women. This paper contributes to enlarge data from Europe, where longitudinal studies are scarce. It supports the idea that there may be global geo-sociocultural differences; however, more studies comparing different school settings are needed.
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spelling pubmed-77805252021-01-11 Searching for the erosion of empathy in medical undergraduate students: a longitudinal study Blanco, José Manuel Caballero, Fernando Álvarez, Santiago Plans, Mercedes Monge, Diana BMJ Open Medical Education and Training OBJECTIVE: To analyse the trajectory of empathy throughout the degree programme of medicine in a Spanish school of medicine. DESIGN: Longitudinal, prospective 5-year study, between October 2014 and June 2019. SETTING: Students from a Spanish university of medicine. PARTICIPANTS: Two voluntary cohorts of undergraduate medical students from two different school years were invited to participate (n=135 (cohort 1, C1) and 106 (cohort 2, C2) per school year). Finally, a total number of 174 students (102 (C1, 71.6% women) and 72 (C2, 70.8% women) students, respectively) were monitored for 5 years. Each cohort was divided in two subcohorts of paired and unpaired students that were analysed to check possible social desirability bias. PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURE: The Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE). RESULTS: The cohort of 102 students (C1) monitored between their first and fifth years of study (71.6% women) showed an improvement among paired women of 2.15 points in total JSE score (p=0.01) and 2.39 points in cognitive empathy (p=0.01); in the unpaired female cohort the increase was of 2.32 points (cognitive empathy) (p=0.02). The cohort of 72 students (C2) monitored between their second and sixth years of study (70.8% women) displayed a cognitive empathy increase of 2.32 points (p=0.04) in the paired group of women. There were no significant differences between paired and unpaired results for either cohort. Empathy scores among men did not decrease. CONCLUSIONS: The empathy of medical students at our school did not decline along grade years. In fact, it improved slightly, particularly cognitive empathy, among women. This paper contributes to enlarge data from Europe, where longitudinal studies are scarce. It supports the idea that there may be global geo-sociocultural differences; however, more studies comparing different school settings are needed. BMJ Publishing Group 2020-12-31 /pmc/articles/PMC7780525/ /pubmed/33384394 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-041810 Text en © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
spellingShingle Medical Education and Training
Blanco, José Manuel
Caballero, Fernando
Álvarez, Santiago
Plans, Mercedes
Monge, Diana
Searching for the erosion of empathy in medical undergraduate students: a longitudinal study
title Searching for the erosion of empathy in medical undergraduate students: a longitudinal study
title_full Searching for the erosion of empathy in medical undergraduate students: a longitudinal study
title_fullStr Searching for the erosion of empathy in medical undergraduate students: a longitudinal study
title_full_unstemmed Searching for the erosion of empathy in medical undergraduate students: a longitudinal study
title_short Searching for the erosion of empathy in medical undergraduate students: a longitudinal study
title_sort searching for the erosion of empathy in medical undergraduate students: a longitudinal study
topic Medical Education and Training
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7780525/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33384394
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-041810
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