Empathy levels among medical students show equivocal trajectories across educational years, with significantly lower levels reported in 14 of 30 studies and higher, mixed or unchanged levels in the remainder¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r3 · q3
Currency · newest study 2020 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · overdue for a recheck since 2025: baselines and conditions change

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Significantly lower levels of empathy by increase in number of educational years were found in 14 out of 30 studies, while the remaining studies identified higher, mixed or unchanged levels. → Andersen Freja Allerelli 2020 q2 i? Only two of the 14 decline-reporting studies were longitudinal; most decline findings come from cross-sectional designs that cannot report change over time. → Andersen Freja Allerelli 2020

Evidence¶

Andersen Freja Allerelli 2020¶

Andersen Freja Allerelli, Johansen Ann-Sofie Bering, Søndergaard Jens, Andersen Christina Maar, Assing Hvidt Elisabeth. (2020). Revisiting the trajectory of medical students' empathy, and impact of gender, specialty preferences and nationality: a systematic review. BMC Medical Education. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-020-1964-5

q3 · i? · review · r3

Systematic review of 30 quantitative studies (24 cross-sectional, 6 longitudinal) published February 2010 to March 2019, searched in PubMed, EMBASE and PsycINFO. The review reports "Significantly lower levels of empathy by increase in number of educational years were found in 14 out of 30 studies", with the remainder reporting higher, mixed or unchanged levels.

"Significantly lower levels of empathy by increase in number of educational years were found in 14 out of 30 studies. Of these, 12 were cross-sectional studies [21, 33, 34, 39–41, 45–48, 50, 52, 54] and two were longitudinal [52, 56]."

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Social Awareness and Relationship Skills — outcome: instruction changes it

Related Claims¶

• Female medical students were reported to have higher empathy scores than male students in 18 of the included studies, with no gender differences found in seven cross-sectional studies
• Nine of 30 studies reported a propensity towards lower mean empathy scores in non-Western compared to Western countries, all applying the JSPE-S
• Self-administered and observed empathy measures can yield opposite trajectories during clinical training, as one longitudinal study found declining self-reported but improving observed empathy
• Only three of nine cross-sectional studies found an association between empathy scores and a preference for people-orientated specialties
• Early clinical exposure is associated with higher empathy scores regardless of gender and academic year