An empirical study of decline in empathy in medical school

It has been reported that medical students become more cynical as they progress through medical school. This can lead to a decline in empathy. Empirical research to address this issue is scarce because the definition of empathy lacks clarity, and a tool to measure empathy specifically in medical students and doctors has been unavailable.

To examine changes in empathy among medical students as they progress through medical school.

A newly developed scale (Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy [JSPE], with 20 Likert-type items) was administered to 125 medical students at the beginning (pretest) and end (post-test) of Year 3 of medical school. This scale was specifically developed for measuring empathy in patient care situations and has acceptable psychometric properties.

In this prospective longitudinal study, the changes in pretest/post-test empathy scores were examined by using t-test for repeated measure design; the effect size estimates were also calculated.

Statistically significant declines were observed in 5 items (P < 0.01) and the total sores of the JSPE (P < 0.05) between the 2 test administrations.

Although the decline in empathy was not clinically important for all of the statistically significant findings, the downward trend suggests that empathy could be amenable to change during medical school. Further research is needed to identify factors that contribute to changes in empathy and to examine whether targeted educational programmes can help to retain, reinforce and cultivate empathy among medical students for improving clinical outcomes.