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Medical students’ preclinical service-learning experience and its effects on empathy in clinical training
BACKGROUND: Service learning (SL) is an educational methodology presumed to help medical students be more empathetic and compassionate. We longitudinally investigated the level of empathy in medical students and how preclinical SL experience was related to their level of empathy in their clinical cl...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8157642/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34039327 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-021-02739-z |
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author | Yang, Yi-Sheng Liu, Pei-Chin Lin, Yung Kai Lin, Chia-Der Chen, Der-Yuan Lin, Blossom Yen-Ju |
author_facet | Yang, Yi-Sheng Liu, Pei-Chin Lin, Yung Kai Lin, Chia-Der Chen, Der-Yuan Lin, Blossom Yen-Ju |
author_sort | Yang, Yi-Sheng |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Service learning (SL) is an educational methodology presumed to help medical students be more empathetic and compassionate. We longitudinally investigated the level of empathy in medical students and how preclinical SL experience was related to their level of empathy in their clinical clerkships. METHODS: Our cohort comprised fifth-year medical students engaged in clerkships as part of a 7-year medical programme at one medical school in Taiwan. Surveys were conducted at the beginning of the clerkship in September 2015 (T1) to collect data on the medical students’ preclinical SL experience in curriculum-based service teams (CBSTs) and extracurricular service teams (ECSTs) and their SL self-efficacy, demographic characteristics, and empathy level. Subsequently, three follow-up surveys were conducted once every 3 months to determine the empathy level of the students during their clinical clerkships (T2–T4). Seventy students who returned the written informed consent and completed the baseline (T1) and two or more follow-up surveys (T2–T4) were included in our analysis with the response rate of 34%. In total, 247 responses across the 1-year clerkship were analysed. Descriptive statistics, paired t tests, and generalised estimating equations were employed. RESULTS: Our study revealed that changes in empathy level in the dimensions of perspective taking, compassionate care, and standing in patients’ shoes in their clinical clerkships. Relative to that at T1, their empathy decreased in perspective taking and compassionate care at T2–T4 but increased in standing in patients’ shoes at T3. Additionally, our study verified the positive effect of medical students’ preclinical SL experience in CBSTs and ECSTs on empathy in terms of compassionate care and perspective taking, respectively, but not on that of standing in patients’ shoes. CONCLUSIONS: Separate investigations into subconstructs of empathy, such as perspective taking, compassionate care, and standing in patients’ shoes, in medical students may be necessary for exploring the various driving forces or barriers to developing empathy in medical students. Moreover, SL experience through both CBSTs and ECSTs at medical academies may have positive effects on medical students’ empathy in their clinical clerkships and should be promoted at medical schools. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8157642 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-81576422021-05-28 Medical students’ preclinical service-learning experience and its effects on empathy in clinical training Yang, Yi-Sheng Liu, Pei-Chin Lin, Yung Kai Lin, Chia-Der Chen, Der-Yuan Lin, Blossom Yen-Ju BMC Med Educ Research BACKGROUND: Service learning (SL) is an educational methodology presumed to help medical students be more empathetic and compassionate. We longitudinally investigated the level of empathy in medical students and how preclinical SL experience was related to their level of empathy in their clinical clerkships. METHODS: Our cohort comprised fifth-year medical students engaged in clerkships as part of a 7-year medical programme at one medical school in Taiwan. Surveys were conducted at the beginning of the clerkship in September 2015 (T1) to collect data on the medical students’ preclinical SL experience in curriculum-based service teams (CBSTs) and extracurricular service teams (ECSTs) and their SL self-efficacy, demographic characteristics, and empathy level. Subsequently, three follow-up surveys were conducted once every 3 months to determine the empathy level of the students during their clinical clerkships (T2–T4). Seventy students who returned the written informed consent and completed the baseline (T1) and two or more follow-up surveys (T2–T4) were included in our analysis with the response rate of 34%. In total, 247 responses across the 1-year clerkship were analysed. Descriptive statistics, paired t tests, and generalised estimating equations were employed. RESULTS: Our study revealed that changes in empathy level in the dimensions of perspective taking, compassionate care, and standing in patients’ shoes in their clinical clerkships. Relative to that at T1, their empathy decreased in perspective taking and compassionate care at T2–T4 but increased in standing in patients’ shoes at T3. Additionally, our study verified the positive effect of medical students’ preclinical SL experience in CBSTs and ECSTs on empathy in terms of compassionate care and perspective taking, respectively, but not on that of standing in patients’ shoes. CONCLUSIONS: Separate investigations into subconstructs of empathy, such as perspective taking, compassionate care, and standing in patients’ shoes, in medical students may be necessary for exploring the various driving forces or barriers to developing empathy in medical students. Moreover, SL experience through both CBSTs and ECSTs at medical academies may have positive effects on medical students’ empathy in their clinical clerkships and should be promoted at medical schools. BioMed Central 2021-05-26 /pmc/articles/PMC8157642/ /pubmed/34039327 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-021-02739-z Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Yang, Yi-Sheng Liu, Pei-Chin Lin, Yung Kai Lin, Chia-Der Chen, Der-Yuan Lin, Blossom Yen-Ju Medical students’ preclinical service-learning experience and its effects on empathy in clinical training |
title | Medical students’ preclinical service-learning experience and its effects on empathy in clinical training |
title_full | Medical students’ preclinical service-learning experience and its effects on empathy in clinical training |
title_fullStr | Medical students’ preclinical service-learning experience and its effects on empathy in clinical training |
title_full_unstemmed | Medical students’ preclinical service-learning experience and its effects on empathy in clinical training |
title_short | Medical students’ preclinical service-learning experience and its effects on empathy in clinical training |
title_sort | medical students’ preclinical service-learning experience and its effects on empathy in clinical training |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8157642/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34039327 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-021-02739-z |
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