Empathy in Chinese eight-year medical program students: differences by school year, educational stage, and future career preference

Dongju Li,Shulan Ma,Mingyi Kang,Huiming Xu

doi:10.1186/s12909-018-1348-2

Abstract

BackgroudTo examine the psychometric properties of a Chinese translation of the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (Student-version, JSE-S), and to study differences in empathy scores among eight-year undergraduate medical students across gender, year of study, and future career preference.MethodsThe JSE-S was administered to 442 participants from December 2016 to July 2017, who were all first- to seventh-year students on an eight-year medical education course at Fudan University. Factor analysis was used to examine the underlying components of the Chinese version of the JSE-S. The data analyses comprised a t-test and analyses of variance.ResultsFactor analysis confirmed four components: perspective taking, compassionate care, ability to stand in patient’s shoes, and difficulties in adopting patient’s perspective. The lowest empathy score was found in the seventh-year students (99.5), while a decline was found across school years. Students in clinical training (sixth/seventh year) had lower empathy than students in premedical study (first/second year), basic medicine (third/fourth year), and clinical medicine (fifth year). Statistically significant differences in empathy mean scores were found in respect of future career preference but not gender. Students who preferred not to become doctors had lower empathy than students who preferred to become doctors, who were undecided, and who did not specify.ConclusionsThe findings support the construct validity and reliability of the Chinese version of the JSE-S for medical students. The study also revealed the features of empathy in eight-year program students, and provided a reliable reference to design interventions to cultivate empathy among Chinese medical students.

Highlights

While the patient-physician relationship stands at the very heart of medicine, the poor relationship between patient and physician has become prominent in China [1, 2] and has been deteriorating over the past 20 years [3, 4]
A number of studies have observed empathy using the JSE-S among medical students from different countries, and empathy scores in terms of gender, school year, and future career specialty have been the emphases of most studies [13,14,15,16,17,18]
We aim to examine the factor structure of a Chinese version of the JSE-S with Chinese students, as well as to assess the differences in empathy scores by gender, year of study, and future career preference in medical students of the eight-year program

Summary

Introduction

While the patient-physician relationship stands at the very heart of medicine, the poor relationship between patient and physician has become prominent in China [1, 2] and has been deteriorating over the past 20 years [3, 4]. Empathy (JSE) is a reliable instrument that has been designed to assess empathy in health professionals (HP-version) and medical students (S-version). It has been translated into 54 languages, and used in 80 countries worldwide [12]. In modern-day China, expectations regarding the country’s healthcare system have risen To meet these growing societal demands, a major reform of how physicians are trained has resulted in the widespread implementation of an eight-year medical education program throughout China in the past decade [19]. We aim to examine the factor structure of a Chinese version of the JSE-S with Chinese students, as well as to assess the differences in empathy scores by gender, year of study, and future career preference in medical students of the eight-year program

Objectives

Results

Conclusion