Maintaining empathy in medical school : it is possible

Background: Empathy is an indispensable skill in medicine and is an integral part of ‘professionalism’. Yet, there is still increasing concern among medical educators and medical professionals regarding the decline in medical students’ empathy during medical education. Aims: This article aims at comparing the levels of empathy in medical school students across the different years of undergraduate medical education. It also aims at examining differences in empathy in relation to gender, year of study, cultural and religious backgrounds, previous tertiary education and certain programmes within the curriculum. Method: The Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy, Student version (JSPE-S) was employed to measure empathy levels in medical students (years one to five) in a cross-sectional study. Attached to the scale was a survey containing questions on demographics, stage of medical education, previous education, and level of completion of particular programmes that aim at promoting personal and professional development (PPD). Results: Four hundred and four students participated in the study. The scores of the JSPE-S ranged from 34 to 135 with a mean score of 109.07 ± 14.937. Female medical students had significantly higher empathy scores than male medical students (111 vs. 106, p < 0.001) across all five years of the medical course. There was no significant difference in the total empathy scores in relation to year of medical education. Yet, the highest means were scored by year five students who had completed personal and professional development courses. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that there is a gender difference in the levels of empathy, favouring female medical students. They also suggest that, despite prior evidence of a decline, empathy may be preserved in medical school by careful student selection and/or personal and professional development courses

Application of Cytoscape to the analysis of diagrams of mechanisms underlying patient problems

In problem based learning (PBL) tutorials in a medical context, students solve authentic patient problems with the educational aim to develop their reasoning capacity. A key activity to facilitate development of their reasoning capacity in a tutorial is the construction of diagrams of mechanisms that explain patient problems. These diagrams are networks of discrete elements (such as headache) of patient problems. Analysis of these diagrams may yield insights into students’ reasoning styles. To achieve this aim, we employed an application called Cytoscape, which is capable of visualising and analysing networks, to study these diagrams. In this preliminary study, we showed that Cytoscape can be used to analyze these diagrams of mechanisms produced in PBL tutorials. We found that students tend to reason in a hierarchical manner. Parameters are also defined that can be used to identify incorrect and missing links in their reasoning processes