An empirical study of decline in empathy in medical school

To examine changes in empathy among medical students as they progress through medical school. MATERIALS AND SUBJECTS: A newly developed scale (Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy [JSPE], with 20 Likert-type items) was administered to 125 medical students at the beginning (pretest) and end (post-test) of Year 3 of medical school. This scale was specifically developed for measuring empathy in patient care situations and has acceptable psychometric properties.

In this prospective longitudinal study, the changes in pretest/post-test empathy scores were examined by using t-test for repeated measure design; the effect size estimates were also calculated.