Empathy In Patient Care Research Articles

Enhancing and sustaining empathy in medical students

Background: Empathy is an important component of physician competence that needs to be enhanced.Aim: To test the hypotheses that medical students’ empathy can be enhanced and sustained by targeted activities.Methods: This was a two-phase study in which 248 medical students participated. In Phase 1, students in the experimental group watched and discussed video clips of patient encounters meant to enhance empathic understanding; those in the control group watched a documentary film. Ten weeks later in Phase 2 of the study, students who were in the experimental group were divided into two groups. One group attended a lecture on empathy in patient care, and the other plus the control group watched a movie about racism. The Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE) was administered pre-post in Phase 1 and posttest in Phase 2.Results: In Phase 1, the JSE mean score for the experimental group improved significantly (p < 0.01); no change in the JSE scores was observed in the control group. In Phase 2, the JSE mean score improvement was sustained in the group that attended the lecture, but not in the other group. No change in empathy was noticed in the control group.Conclusion: Research hypotheses were confirmed.

Psychometric Analysis of the JSPE Nursing Student Version R: Comparison of Senior BSN Students and Medical Students Attitudes toward Empathy in Patient Care

Background. Empathic communication skills are critical to providing high-quality nursing care to holistically understand the patient's perspective. A survey research design was used to address the research questions discussed in this study. Data consisted of responses from nursing students attending accredited programs in the southeastern United Sates using the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy Nursing Student Version R (JSPE-R). Findings. Comparisons of the total scores from JSPE Versions S and R yielded similar means and standard deviations with 115 and 114.57, respectively, and standard deviations of 10 and 10.94, respectively. The results of a one-sample t-test failed to render statistical significance (t = −1.22, P = .224), indicating that the overall attitudes of nursing students and medical students are similar. The 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles and overall instrument reliability were also comparable. Conclusions. This paper supports the emergence of alternative factor analysis structures as applied to nursing students through statistical progression from exploratory factor analysis to confirmatory structures. Implications for practice explore the utility of empathy instruments in nurse education, such as empathy progression through curriculum. As nursing educators, the utility of development of instruments to measure effectiveness of teaching strategies and pedagogy for empathy enhancement in practice is important.

Empathy in patient care: antecedents, development, measurement, and outcomes

Empathy in Human Relationships.- Definitions and Conceptualization.- Human Connection in Health and Illness.- An Evolutionary Perspective, Psycho-Socio-Physiology, Neuroanatomy, and Heritability.- Psychodynamics and Development.- Measurement of Empathy in the General Population.- Empathy in Patient Care.- A Definition and Key Features of Empathy in Patient Care.- The Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy.- The Interpersonal Dynamics in Clinician-Patient Relationships.- Empathy as Related to Sex, Personal Qualities, Clinical Competence, and Career Choice.- Patient Outcomes.- Enhancement of Empathy.- Parting Thoughts: A Paradigm of Empathy and Future Directions.

Emotion and the physician-patient relationship

This paper develops a framework of the role of empathy in patient care and explicitly links the framework to important outcomes. Following a definition of empathy and clinical examples, evidence is reviewed on the relevance of empathy to increasing patient satisfaction, increasing adherence with physician recommendations, and decreasing the frequency of medical malpractice suits.