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A cross-sectional study of student empathy across four medical schools in Denmark—associations between empathy level and age, sex, specialty preferences and motivation
BACKGROUND: Professional empathy has been associated with a range of positive patient- and clinician outcomes and is therefore considered important to develop for future physicians. Measuring changes in empathy scores among medical students by using the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (Student version) (...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9223265/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35739548 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03532-2 |
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author | Assing Hvidt, Elisabeth Søndergaard, Jens Wehberg, Sonja Hvidt, Niels Christian Andersen, Christina Maar |
author_facet | Assing Hvidt, Elisabeth Søndergaard, Jens Wehberg, Sonja Hvidt, Niels Christian Andersen, Christina Maar |
author_sort | Assing Hvidt, Elisabeth |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Professional empathy has been associated with a range of positive patient- and clinician outcomes and is therefore considered important to develop for future physicians. Measuring changes in empathy scores among medical students by using the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (Student version) (JSE-S) has led to mixed results. So far, no investigation of Danish medical students’ empathy development has been conducted. The aim of this study was therefore to examine the associations between empathy scores among Danish medical students and medical school, year of curriculum, age, sex, co-habitation, and parental status, specialty preferences and motivations for choosing medicine as a future profession. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional questionnaire study. All medical students from four medical schools in Denmark in their first, third and sixth year (N = 4,178) were invited to participate in the study in October 2020. The associations between JSE-S sum score and the above explanatory factors were analysed by uni- and multivariable linear regression models. RESULTS: The JSE-S was completed by 672 medical students. The overall mean score was 112.7. There were no statistically significant differences in empathy between medical schools, first, third- and sixth- year medical students, age groups or parental status. Female students and students living with a spouse or partner scored higher on JSE-S than male students or students living alone, and the sex difference remained statistically significant in the multivariable regression. In both the univariable and multivariable setting, preference for future medical specialty was statistically significant, with a decrease in scores for students choosing surgery-specialties. Motivational factors were not statistically significantly associated with empathy, although there was a slight upwards trend for one of the motivational categories, named “personal experiences”. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, our results showed neither decrease nor increase but instead rather stable empathy scores across years of curriculum of medical students in Denmark, adding to the mixed picture of empathy development among medical students. Our findings are consistent with positive associations found in international studies between empathy scores and higher age, female sex, specialty preferences for psychiatry and general practice and altruistic motivations for choosing to enroll. Although specialty preferences are changing during medical education, they may be used meaningfully as predictors of individual student empathy levels. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-022-03532-2. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9223265 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-92232652022-06-24 A cross-sectional study of student empathy across four medical schools in Denmark—associations between empathy level and age, sex, specialty preferences and motivation Assing Hvidt, Elisabeth Søndergaard, Jens Wehberg, Sonja Hvidt, Niels Christian Andersen, Christina Maar BMC Med Educ Research BACKGROUND: Professional empathy has been associated with a range of positive patient- and clinician outcomes and is therefore considered important to develop for future physicians. Measuring changes in empathy scores among medical students by using the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (Student version) (JSE-S) has led to mixed results. So far, no investigation of Danish medical students’ empathy development has been conducted. The aim of this study was therefore to examine the associations between empathy scores among Danish medical students and medical school, year of curriculum, age, sex, co-habitation, and parental status, specialty preferences and motivations for choosing medicine as a future profession. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional questionnaire study. All medical students from four medical schools in Denmark in their first, third and sixth year (N = 4,178) were invited to participate in the study in October 2020. The associations between JSE-S sum score and the above explanatory factors were analysed by uni- and multivariable linear regression models. RESULTS: The JSE-S was completed by 672 medical students. The overall mean score was 112.7. There were no statistically significant differences in empathy between medical schools, first, third- and sixth- year medical students, age groups or parental status. Female students and students living with a spouse or partner scored higher on JSE-S than male students or students living alone, and the sex difference remained statistically significant in the multivariable regression. In both the univariable and multivariable setting, preference for future medical specialty was statistically significant, with a decrease in scores for students choosing surgery-specialties. Motivational factors were not statistically significantly associated with empathy, although there was a slight upwards trend for one of the motivational categories, named “personal experiences”. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, our results showed neither decrease nor increase but instead rather stable empathy scores across years of curriculum of medical students in Denmark, adding to the mixed picture of empathy development among medical students. Our findings are consistent with positive associations found in international studies between empathy scores and higher age, female sex, specialty preferences for psychiatry and general practice and altruistic motivations for choosing to enroll. Although specialty preferences are changing during medical education, they may be used meaningfully as predictors of individual student empathy levels. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-022-03532-2. BioMed Central 2022-06-23 /pmc/articles/PMC9223265/ /pubmed/35739548 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03532-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 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 Assing Hvidt, Elisabeth Søndergaard, Jens Wehberg, Sonja Hvidt, Niels Christian Andersen, Christina Maar A cross-sectional study of student empathy across four medical schools in Denmark—associations between empathy level and age, sex, specialty preferences and motivation |
title | A cross-sectional study of student empathy across four medical schools in Denmark—associations between empathy level and age, sex, specialty preferences and motivation |
title_full | A cross-sectional study of student empathy across four medical schools in Denmark—associations between empathy level and age, sex, specialty preferences and motivation |
title_fullStr | A cross-sectional study of student empathy across four medical schools in Denmark—associations between empathy level and age, sex, specialty preferences and motivation |
title_full_unstemmed | A cross-sectional study of student empathy across four medical schools in Denmark—associations between empathy level and age, sex, specialty preferences and motivation |
title_short | A cross-sectional study of student empathy across four medical schools in Denmark—associations between empathy level and age, sex, specialty preferences and motivation |
title_sort | cross-sectional study of student empathy across four medical schools in denmark—associations between empathy level and age, sex, specialty preferences and motivation |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9223265/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35739548 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03532-2 |
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