Recent findings suggest certain aspects of a student's empathy increase during their time in medical school, according to research published in the journal Medical Education.
For the study, researchers asked students in the class of 2016 at an undisclosed medical school to complete a series of self-reports and behavioral measures twice a year for their first three years of medical school, from 2012 through 2015. Students were asked to identify their level of empathy according to the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy and the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy, in addition to completing behavioral tests to measure their sensitivity to others' pain and understanding of others' emotions.
Researchers discovered aspects of students' empathy, specifically overall cognitive empathy and affective empathy and their related subcomponents, increased, while the remaining subcomponents remained stable. Students' understanding of others' emotions and sensitivity to pain also increased.
"Changes in empathy during medical school cannot be simply characterised as representing an overall decline. Indeed, aspects of empathy thought to be valuable in positive physician–patient interactions improve during training," the study authors wrote.