ReviewCanadian medical education journal2022
When patients teach students empathy: a systematic review of interventions for promoting medical student empathy.
Review in Canadian medical education journal, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Empathy training in healthcare: an umbrella review.BMC medical education · 2025Pooled it
- Could Empathy Be Taught? The Role of Advanced Technologies to Foster Empathy in Medical Students and Healthcare Professionals: A Systematic Review.Journal of medical systems · 2025Pooled it
- Positive impact of a patient-perspective video on engagement and learning in a kidney transplant seminar: a cluster-randomized study.World journal of urology · 2026Trial
- "We are blind to quite a lot of things": perspectives of a communications curriculum enlisting persons with disability (PWD) as patient educators and its impact on medical professional identity formation.BMC medical education · 2026Article
- Patient-Centered Podcasts: An Educational Innovation to Improve Attitudes Toward Patients with Opioid Use Disorder Among Internal Medicine Practitioners.Journal of general internal medicine · 2026Article
- Patient Involvement to Promote Empathy in Preclinical Medical Students: Cross-Sectional Intervention Study.Journal of participatory medicine · 2026Article
- Impact of Brief Patient Exposure on Pre-Clinical U.S. Medical Student Bias Towards Mental Health.Academic psychiatry : the journal of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training and the Association for Academic Psychiatry · 2025Article
- The pedagogical liminality of patient and public involvement in initial healthcare professional education: an umbrella review.Research involvement and engagement · 2025Review
- Attitudes of medical students towards communication skills and patient-centered care: the impact of group mentorship.International journal of medical education · 2025Article
- Reflecting on the Spectrum of Involvement: How do we involve patients as partners in education?Medical education · 2025Article
- Cultivating physician empathy: a person-centered study based in self-determination theory.Medical education online · 2024Article
- Cognitive empathy variations during internship: a study from Iran.BMC medical education · 2024Article
- Using reflective writing to enhance empathy among medical students.Canadian medical education journal · 2024Article
- 12 Tips for Centering Patient Voices through "Lived Experience Panels" in Preclinical Undergraduate Medical Education.MedEdPublish (2016) · 2024Article
- Raising patient voices in medical education: an assessment of patient perceived effect of social determinants of health conversations and the patient-physician relationship on quality of obstetric care, to inform the development of patient driven medical education curricula.Frontiers in reproductive health · 2024Article
- Assessing empathy in healthcare services: a systematic review of South American healthcare workers' and patients' perceptions.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Review
- It's hard to get better as a teacher when you're on your own: consider instructional coaching.Canadian medical education journal · 2022Article
- Article
- Medical Student-Perceived Barriers, Facilitators, and Considerations Regarding Clinical Empathy Training: A Qualitative Study.Journal of medical education and curricular developmentArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Despite growing emphasis on empathic care, numerous studies demonstrate diminishing empathy in medical students. Involving patient educators in medical curricula may be a solution. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review to evaluate patient-involved interventions that promote empathy among medical students. Method: A literature search of MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, and ERIC databases was performed using the keywords "empathy," "medical student," and their synonyms. Results were independently screened in duplicate. Conflicts were resolved by group consensus. All English studies describing interventions that promote empathy in medical students engaging patient educators were included. Relevant data was extracted and summarized. Results: 1467 studies were screened. 14 studies were included, of which 10 were pilot studies. Studies included patient involved interventions such as storytelling (5/14), shadowing patients (3/14), recorded videos (3/14), or combinations of methods (3/14). Qualitative measurements of empathy included written feedback and group discussions. Quantitative measurements included validated scales measuring empathy. All studies demonstrated increase in empathy among medical students. Participants reported satisfaction with training and patients reported being proud of giving back by training future physicians. Conclusion: Interventions engaging patient educators were shown to have a positive impact on medical student empathy. Furthermore, patient-led education was shown to increase medical student understanding of subject and knowledge retention while empowering patients. Further implementation of patient-involved education is an important step forward in patient-partnered care and may identify additional advantages of patient engagement in medical education.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.