ArticleBMC medical education2016
A longitudinal study of empathy in pre-clinical and clinical medical students and clinical supervisors.
Article in BMC medical education, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 65 citations in OpenAlex.
- Predictors of Physician Compassion, Empathy, and Related Constructs: a Systematic Review.Journal of general internal medicine · 2022Pooled it
- The Contribution of Citizens to Community-Based Medical Education in Japan: A Systematic Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Pooled it
- Protection, preparation or processing support for medical students' emotional challenges in work-based learning-a grounded theory.Advances in health sciences education : theory and practice · 2026Article
- Dimensions and temporal stability of medical students' motivation: longitudinal evidence from a panel data survey.BMC medical education · 2026Article
- Hierarchy hurts: a comparative cross-sectional analysis of empathy and its determinants in medical, midwifery, and nursing students.BMC medical education · 2025Article
- The relationship between self-efficacy, learning burnout, willingness to fulfill the contract and empathy of rural-oriented tuition-waived medical students of China: a cross-sectional study.BMC medical education · 2025Article
- The association of empathy and the work-family conflict in doctors of dental medicine.Acta odontologica Scandinavica · 2024Article
- Empathy in undergraduate medical students: a multi-center cross-sectional study in China.BMC psychiatry · 2024Article
- Beyond empathy decline: Do the barriers to compassion change across medical training?Advances in health sciences education : theory and practice · 2022Article
- Optimising planned medical education strategies to develop learners' person-centredness: A realist review.Medical education · 2022Review
- Clinical Empathy for the Surgical Patient: Lessons From W.H. Auden's Prose and Poetry.Annals of surgery open : perspectives of surgical history, education, and clinical approaches · 2021Article
- The direct and indirect effects of clinical empathy on well-being among pre-medical students: a structural equation model approach.BMC medical education · 2021Article
- Self-Reported Assessment of Empathy and Its Variations in a Sample of Greek Social Workers.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- The Long-Term Effectiveness of Empathic Interventions in Medical Education: A Systematic Review.Advances in medical education and practice · 2020Review
- Navigating Cognitive Dissonance: A Qualitative Content Analysis Exploring Medical Students' Experiences of Moral Distress in the Emergency Department.AEM education and training · 2019Article
- The Positive Association Between Empathy and Self-Esteem in Chinese Medical Students: A Multi-Institutional Study.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
- Exhausted through client interaction-Detached concern profiles as an emotional resource over time?PloS one · 2019Article
- Trustingly bewildered. How first-year medical students make sense of their learning experience in a traditional, preclinical curriculum.Medical education online · 2018Article
- Emotion Transfer, Emotion Regulation, and Empathy-Related Processes in Physician-Patient Interactions and Their Association With Physician Well-Being: A Theoretical Model.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2018Article
- Stretching the Comfort Zone: Using Early Clinical Contact to Influence Professional Identity Formation in Medical Students.Journal of medical education and curricular developmentArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundAlthough appropriate empathy in health professionals is essential, a loss of empathy can occur during medical education. The structure of clinical learning may be one factor that is implicated in a loss of empathy. This study examines student and doctor empathy, and possible associations between empathy and the structure of clinical learning.
methodsThere were three groups of participants: medical students (n = 281), who completed a longitudinal survey consisting of the Jefferson Scale of Empathy and an open question about empathy at the beginning and end of the 2013 academic year; private doctors (medical practitioners) in South Australia (n = 78) who completed a survey consisting of the Jefferson Scale of Empathy and an open question about empathy at the end of the students' academic year; and doctors (medical practitioners) from public teaching hospitals (n = 72) in southern Adelaide, South Australia who completed a survey consisting of the Jefferson Scale of Empathy at the end of the students' academic year .
resultsYear one students' empathy scores at the end of the year (102.8 ± 17.7) were significantly lower than at the start of the year (112.3 ± 9.6) p < .05). There were no other significant differences in students' empathy scores by year groups or across the two time points. Empathy scores were almost identical for private and hospital clinicians and higher than average scores for students. Free-text comments highlighted the importance students and doctors place on empathy. Students described issues that adversely affected their empathy, including specific incidents, systemic issues, and course structure, but also described some positive role models. Doctors' comments focused on the importance of empathy but qualified its meaning in the therapeutic setting.
conclusionMedical students and practitioners alike ascribe importance to empathy in clinical practice, yet its developmental course remains poorly understood with possible decrement across the course of medical education. A more sophisticated understanding of empathy in medical students is needed, with attention to issues that might adversely impact on this crucial aspect of their development.
trial registrationThis was not undertaken as the research did not involve a health care intervention on human participants.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.