Interactive module's effectiveness on empathy and attitudes of healthcare students

As the prevalence of social determinants of health (SDH) continues to have an impact on the management of chronic conditions, it is imperative to expose health professional students to these encounters.

This study investigates the role that virtual interactive modules play on osteopathic medical students and physician assistant (PA) students' empathy and attitudes toward individuals with diabetes mellitus who are also affected by an array of SDHs.

Students from both health professional programs were asked to complete a pre-survey and post-survey that encompassed the Diabetes Attitude Scale, the Jefferson Empathy Scale, and the Assessing Student Competence and Knowledge of Social Determinants of Health (ASCK-SDH) Instrument. Students engaged with virtual interactive modules to follow the life of a patient, Lula Mae, who lives in the Appalachian area with Type 2 diabetes.

Results from 151 osteopathic medical students concluded significant findings for the Diabetes Attitudes Scale (p<0.001), Jefferson Empathy Scale (p<0.02), and ASCK-SDH (p=0.02). While the matched data pairs for the PA students were too small in number to be significant, the data showed a positive trend pre-module to post-module.

This interactive module improved health professionals' awareness, empathy, and attitudes toward SDH affecting those with chronic conditions. This implementation can be a valuable and insightful medical educational tool that can be adapted for other scenarios like various clinical rotations and sensitive healthcare topics to enhance the development of health professional students' cultural competency and health equity awareness by exposure to various cultural, socioeconomic, and social identities in their future medical decision-making.