Brief observation
Medical Humanities Coursework Is Associated with Greater Measured Empathy in Medical Students

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2016.08.005Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

The primary focus of the study was to determine whether coursework in the medical humanities would ameliorate students' loss of and failure to develop empathy, a problem known to be common during medical education.

Methods

Students were offered an elective course in the Medical Humanities for academic credit. The Jefferson Scale of Empathy Student Version (JSE-S) was administered at the beginning and end of an academic year in which humanities courses were offered. Changes in JSE-S scores among students who studied Medical Humanities were compared with changes in student who did not take any humanities coursework.

Results

Medical humanities coursework correlated with superior empathy outcomes among the medical students. Of students not enrolled in humanities courses, 71% declined or failed to increase in JSE-S score over the academic year. Of those who took humanities coursework, 46% declined or failed to increase in JSE-S scores. The difference was statistically significant (P = .03). The medical humanities curriculum correlated with favorable empathy outcomes as measured by the JSE-S.

Conclusions

Elective medical humanities coursework correlated with improved empathy score outcomes in a group of US medical students. This may reflect a direct effect of the humanities coursework. Alternately, students' elective choice to take medical humanities coursework may be a marker for students with a propensity to favorable empathy outcomes.

Section snippets

Groups Compared

Our central research question was whether empathy scores would be preserved among students who took humanities coursework or their empathy scores would decrease, as appears typical of US medical students. Therefore, we compared a group of students who took humanities coursework with peer students in the same year and the same medical school program who did not take any medical humanities coursework.

Measure Compared

We selected the JSE-S because of its wide use and prior validation, having been used in 83

Results

Studying medical humanities correlated with increased JSE-S outcomes at the end of the school year. Of 88 students invited to participate, 68 completed the JSE-S instrument at both the beginning and the end of the year. Of these 68, 25 enrolled in medical humanities coursework and 43 did not. Twenty eligible participants did not complete the JSE-S and were excluded from the analysis. Of 43 students who did not participate in medical humanities coursework, 12 (28%) demonstrated an increase in

Discussion

To our knowledge, these are the first data associating medical humanities coursework with favorable empathy outcomes among students. Medical humanities studies may ameliorate the “hardening of the heart” known to occur during medical school education. In our study, medical humanities coursework correlated with favorable scores of clinical empathy.

We suggest 2 major mechanisms to explain our finding of favorable empathy score outcomes among humanities students. First, humanities coursework may

Conclusions

Despite these limitations, our overall positive results suggest that medical humanities coursework may improve empathy as an educational outcome. Future research should evaluate whether humanities coursework that is required, instead of elective, has a similar correlation with favorable empathy scores. Second, the relationship between studying humanities and higher empathy scores should be examined in the later clinical phase of medical school. Ongoing study will improve medical curricula to

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Funding: None.

Conflict of Interest: None.

Authorship: All authors had access to the data and played a role in writing this manuscript.

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