Assessing medical students’ empathy and attitudes towards patient-centered care with an existing clinical performance exam (OSCE)

Abstract

This research was performed to study the ability of an existing 8-station Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) to capture the degree of students’ patient-centeredness and empathy as measured by the 18-item Patient-Practitioner Orientation Scale (PPOS) and the 20-item Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE). A cohort of 101 year-3 students completed the OSCE, PPOS, and JSE. Results showed that students’ level of empathy had a moderate association with students’ score on the patient-provider interaction component of the OSCE. Simulated patients in clinical encounters can be used for identifying the level of students’ empathy.