Empathy in Medical Students: Enhancing and Fostering
Compassion in Healthcare

Department of international Cooperation for
Medical Education
Wu HanThe Definition of empathy and compassion

Empathy: the ability to sense,
feel, and understand another’semotions

Compassion: an emotional
response to another’s pain or
suffering involving an authentic
desire to help
Singer T, Klimecki OM. Empathy and compassion. Curr Biol. 2014;24(18):R875–R8.

Empathetic and compassionate care

Improved clinical outcomes for patients：

For health care providers：n adherence to prescribed therapies

p associated with lower burnout andimproved well-being.

n reduce depression and improve quality oflife

p potential emotional cost to identifying
too closely with patient distressn significantly reduce patient anxiety

u With in health care systems compassionate
care is associated with lower health carecosts

p experiencing empathy alone may resultin negative outcomes for clinicians,
integrating compassion training may
foster clinician well-being

Gleichgerrcht E, Decety J. Empathy: From bench to bedside. The costs of empathy among health professionals. Decety IJ, editor. Cambridge: TheMIT Press; 2012..
Atient-centered communication and diagnostic testing. Ann Fam Med. 2005;3(5):415–21.

Problems with empathy and compassion

Empathy and compassion are not simply inherent traits, which health care providers
intrinsically either do or do not possess, but can be enhanced through training interventions

l Medical curricula starting tofocus more on empathy/compassion training,
attenuating the decline

empathy and compassion decline

l no standard for empathy/compassion training, need todevelop evidence-basedtrainingCurrent status of medical students in JapanThe data from the medical school of Okayama University in Japan,from April 2011 to April 2021

Kataoka, H.U., Tokinobu, A., Fujii, C. et al. Eleven years of dataon the Jefferson Scale of Empathy – medical student version:
Japanese norm data and tentative cutoff scores. BMC Med
Educ 23, 81 (2023).

Current status of medical students in Japan

Current status of medical students in Japan

Current status of medical students in Japan

Table 3 Frequency and percentage distributions and descriptive statistics of scores on the JSE-S by gender

Comparison with previous studies

JP：110.0

JP：112.6Zhang D, Li G, Mu L, Thapa J, Li Y, Chen Z, et al. Trends in medical school application and matriculation rates across the United States From 2001 to2015: implications for health disparities. Acad Med. 2021;96(6):885–93.

Comparison with previous studiesl The age at entry to medical school is higher in the US, more than 98% of applicants andmatriculants between 2001 and 2015 were 21 years old or older at the time of entry in the US
Hojat M, Gonnella JS. Eleven years of data on the Jefferson Scale of Empathy-Medical Student Version (JSE-S): proxy norm data and tentative
cutoff scores. Med Princ Pract. 2015;24(4):344–50.

Comparison with previous studies

l approximately 85% of matriculants in medical schools are younger than 21 years at the timeof matriculation in Japan https://www.mext.go.jp/component/a_menu/education/detail/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2018/09/10/1409128_002_1.pdf

Comparison with previous studiesl Matriculants in the US have a broad background in their undergraduate majors
l “Social and Behavioral Sciences” and “Arts and Humanities” had higher mean scores of JSES than those with a background in “Biological / Chemical and Physical Sciences”
l Students have more experience before entering medical school in the US
l Most matriculants in Japan, enter medical school directly from high school, with chemistry
and physical sciences courses, with the exception of those who may have failed their entrance
exam at their first attempt.

In the end

ü In the future study, we can confirm the validity and practicality of thecutoff scores reported in this study by comparing high-scoring andstudents on measures of clinical competence to examine whether
differences in clinical competence ratings present as expected.

THANK YOU！