You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 9, Issue 6
  • Investigating the relation between self-assessment and patients’ assessments of physicians-in-training empathy: a multicentric, observational, cross-sectional study in three teaching hospitals in Brazil

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

XML
Medical education and training
Research
Investigating the relation between self-assessment and patients’ assessments of physicians-in-training empathy: a multicentric, observational, cross-sectional study in three teaching hospitals in Brazil
  1. Mônica Oliveira Bernardo1,
  2. Dario Cecilio-Fernandes2,
  3. Alba Regina de Abreu Lima3,
  4. Julian Furtado Silva4,
  5. Hugo Dugolin Ceccato4,
  6. Manuel João Costa5,
  7. Marco Antonio de Carvalho-Filho2,4
  1. 1 Radiology, Pontificia Universidade Catolica de Sao Paulo Faculdade de Ciencias Medicas e da Saude, Sorocaba, São Paulo, Brazil
  2. 2 CEDAR - Center for Education Development and Research in Health Professions, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
  3. 3 Medical Faculty of São Jose do Rio Preto, São José do Rio Preto, Brazil
  4. 4 Internal Medicine, Universidade Estadual de Campinas Faculdade de Ciencias Medicas, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil
  5. 5 Life and Health Sciences Research Institute, School of Health Sciences, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
  1. Correspondence to Dr. Marco Antonio de Carvalho-Filho; m.a.de.carvalho.filho{at}umcg.nl, macarvalhofilho{at}gmail.com

Abstract

Objectives This study investigated the associations between self-assessed empathy levels by physicians in training and empathy levels as perceived by their patients after clinical encounters. The authors also examined whether patient assessments were valid and reliable tools to measure empathy in physicians in training.

Design A multicentric, observational, cross-sectional study.

Setting This study was conducted in three public teaching hospitals in Brazil.

Participants From the 668 patients invited to participate in this research, 566 (84.7%) agreed. Of these, 238 (42%) were male and 328 (58%) were female. From the invited 112 physicians in training, 86 (76.8%) agreed. Of the 86 physicians in training, 35 (41%) were final-year medical students and 51 (59%) were residents from clinical and surgical specialties. The gender distribution was 39 (45%) males and 47 (51%) females.

Primary and secondary outcome measures Physicians in training filled the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (JSE) and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. Patients answered the Jefferson Scale of Patient’s Perceptions of Physician Empathy (JSPPPE) and the Consultation and Relational Empathy Scale (CARE).

Results This study found non-significant correlations between patient and physicians-in-training self-assessments, except for a weak correlation (0.241, p<0.01) between the JSPPPE score and the JSE compassionate care subscore. CARE and JSPPPE scales proved to be valid and reliable instruments.

Conclusions Physicians-in-training self-assessments of empathy differ from patient assessments. Knowledge about empathy derived from self-assessment studies probably does not capture the perspective of the patients, who are key stakeholders in patient-centred care. Future research on the development of physician empathy or on outcomes of educational interventions to foster empathy should include patient perspectives.

  • empathy
  • education
  • medical
  • internship and residency
  • patients

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-029356

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • MOB and DC-F contributed equally.

    • Contributors MOB, MJC and MAdC-F have substantially contributed to the design of the work. MOB, ARdAL, JFS and HDC were responsible for the acquisition of data. DC-F was responsible for the data analyses. MOB, DC-F, MJC and MAdC-F were responsible for the interpretation of the data. MOB and DC-F were responsible for the first draft of the paper. All the authors have critically revised and approved the final version of the paper. All authors are accountable for all aspects of the work.

    • Funding This study was funded by the ’Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo - FAPESP' (grant number: 2016/11908-1) and by the ’Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq' (grant number: 202319/2017-2).

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Ethics approval We obtained ethical approval for this study from the Research Ethics Committee of the three universities involved (university A, CAAE=63847016.90.1001.5373; university B, CAAE=63847016.90.2002.5404; and university C, CAAE=63847016.90.2001.5415). All participants gave written informed consent before data collection.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement All data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as supplementary information.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.