Using patient storytelling to improve medical students’ empathy in Japan: a pre-post study

BACKGROUND: Empathy for patients is now internationally accepted as one of the competencies of physicians for patient-centered medical practice and an essential component of medical education. Recently, “patient storytelling” has attracted attention in empathy education for medical students to understand patients’ experiences, feelings, and perspectives. This study aimed to quantitatively evaluate how patient storytelling enhanced undergraduate medical students’ empathy in Japan to the extent that they sustained it for six months. METHODS: Participants were 159 fourth-year undergraduate medical students in Tokyo in academic years 2018 and 2019. The questionnaire surveys were conducted three times: at the beginning of the class, immediately after the class, and six months after the class. The Japanese version of the Jefferson Scale of Empathy-Student Version was used in this study. Gender, age, and clinical orientation were also obtained through the self-reported questionnaire. We invited a male patient storyteller who was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease to the classes on “Professionalism.” The title of his storytelling was “The Power of Medical Professionals’ Words.” RESULTS: JSE-S scores improved significantly immediately after listening to patient storytelling. The scores remained improved six months after the class. Interest of specialty was significantly positively associated with an immediate change in JSE-S scores. However, gender had no significant association with changes in JSE-S scores either immediately or six months after education. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings may suggest that patient storytelling would be useful to cultivate empathy among undergraduate medical students. It is to be expected that more medical schools will use patient storytelling to educate medical students in humanistic and communication education. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-023-04054-1.