Empathy Among Internal Medicine Residents in a Community-Based Training Program: A Pilot Study

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Background: Empathy in patient care is a highly valuable skill that is promoted in medical education; however, research conducted in academic centers strongly suggests a declining trend in empathy as years of medical education increase. Objective: To assess residents' empathy levels in a community-based internal medicine training program. We hypothesized that empathy in our program did not decrease with years of training. Methods: A cross-sectional, observational study of 22 resident physicians who completed the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy between May and October of 2013. The residents were at the end of their first (PGY1), second (PGY2), or third (PGY3) year of training, or were incoming interns (PGY0) at the beginning of their first year. Results: Of 48 eligible residents, responses of 22 (45%) are included in the analysis. The empathy scores for participants ranged from 96 to 136 with a mean of 117.4 and a SD of 10.1. Incoming residents, PGY1, 2 and 3 residents' mean scores were 109.7, 117.2, 114.3 and 124.0 respectively. There was no statistical difference between males and females or between PGY1 and PGY2 residents. A statistically significant difference in mean empathy scores was found between incoming residents and PGY3, with PGY3 residents scoring higher in empathy. Conclusion: The empathy scores in our internal medicine residency program identified higher levels of empathy associated with residents at the end of training. This may be related to our targeted curricula which includes behavioral science and geriatric medicine curriculums.