Assessment of Compassion in Physician Assistant Students

It has been shown that empathy erodes in the later phases of education of both medical students and physician assistant (PA) students. This brief study assessed compassion in PA students at different levels of training to explore if a similar phenomenon occurs.

Students at entry, midway, and at the end of PA training were surveyed using Pommier's Compassion Scale.

Although overall compassion scores were lower when comparing students further along in training, differences were not significant. Females scored significantly higher on the kindness subscale overall. Scores for the common humanity subscale declined for both males and females.

Unlike scales measuring empathy have shown, scores using a compassion rating scale did not decline with progression through PA school. Further research is needed to elucidate differences in subscales of compassion.