Medical Education > Current Research Studies: Empathy
Research Studies: Empathy
For further information contact Mohammadreza.Hojat@jefferson.edu
We have developed scales to measure empathy in physicians, medical students, and health professionals as well as patients' perception of empathy in their physicians. These enable us to study the development, stability or change of empathy during the course of professional education and beyond. The Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE).
Selected highlights of published findings:
- Gender - Women scored significantly higher than men on the JSE in medical school, residency, and practice.
- Clinical Competence - High scorers on the JSE were given higher global ratings of clinical competence in six third-year core clerkships.
- Long-Term Predictive Validity -Scores on the JSE in third year of medical school can help predict residency program directors' ratings of empathic skills three years later (at the completion of the first residency year).
- Specialty Choice - Medical students and physicians who scored higher on the JSE were more likely to choose "people-oriented" specialties (e.g., primary care, psychiatry) than "technology/procedure-oriented" specialties (e.g., hospital-based specialties such as anesthesiology, pathology, and radiology, and surgery/surgical subspecialties).
- Empathy and OSCE - Scores of the JSE were significantly associated with simulated patients' ratings of students' empathy in OSCE stations.
- Decline in Empathy - Scores of the JSE decline in the third year of medical school, and in nursing students who were exposed to patient care.
- Preventing Decline in Empathy - Shadowing patients by emergency medicine residents in emergency room for a short period of time prevented decline in empathy among participating residents.
- Patient Outcomes - Family medicine physicians who scored higher on the JSE were more likely than their lower scoring colleagues to have good patient outcomes (hemoglobin A1c <7, and LDL cholesterol level <100) in diabetic patients.
Other sub-sections of "Empathy" that may be of interest to you:
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