Excerpt:
A study published in a recent issue of Academic Medicine found that medical students' feelings of empathy erode sharply during their third year of medical school -- just as they are shifting from largely didactic learning activities toward hands-on patient-care. ...
According to family medicine education experts, this erosion of empathy is a significant and problematic issue, because physicians' feelings of concern are related to better patient outcomes.
...
The study authors suggested that reasons for the decline include a lack of role models, the volume of materials to learn, time pressures, and patient and environmental factors, such as overly demanding patients and restrictions on caregivers' autonomy.
The study also cited students' overreliance on computer-based diagnostic and therapeutic
technology that "limits their vision for the importance of human interactions in patient encounters" and the promotion of physicians' emotional detachment leading to "a benign neglect of the art of patient care."
...
The Academic Medicine study suggested that various approaches to enhance empathy in medical education can be effective, including analyzing students' audio- or videotaped encounters with patients, being exposed to role models, role-playing, shadowing a patient, and studying literature and the arts along with medicine.
Click to read the rest of "Medical Students' Empathy Plunges in Third Year, Says Study" (American Academy of Family Physicians News Now).
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