Questão 18 - Barão de Mauá Maio 2022

TEXT FOR QUESTION

 

Empathy is related to clinical competence in medical care

ABSTRACT

Objectives
Most medical schools focus upon aspects of interpersonal
functioning such as empathy in the doctor–patient
relationship with the aim of training clinically competent
doctors. This study investigated the relationship between
empathy and clinical competence among medical students.

Methods
Fifty-seven medical students participated in the study.
Clinical competence was assessed in an objective
structured clinical examination (OSCE). Empathy was
rated by an independent observer of the clinical interaction
in OSCE stations. In addition, empathy was self-rated using

the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy–Student Version.

Results
Observed behaviour indicative of empathy, as rated
objectively by an independent observer, was strongly
associated with clinical competence. The strong association
between the behavioural manifestation of empathy and
clinical competence was evident across a range of medical
conditions and types of consultation. In addition, observable
empathy was strongly associated with patients’ ratings of
the students’ performances. Self-rated empathy, however,
was not associated with clinical competence. Significant
differences in mean total competence scores were noted
between students low in observed empathy (mean ±
standard deviation [SD]: 165.86 ± 12.92) and students
high in observed empathy (mean ± SD: 190.35 ± 14.00)
(t[55] = 6.28, p = 0.000, a ≤ 0.01).

Conclusions
In medical education, strategies that enhance the
behavioural expression of empathy (or at least retard its
decay) could help to make medical students appear to be
more clinically competent to both examiners and patients.
However, if medical students’ internal emotions are found
to be discrepant with their behaviour, these findings will
raise difficult questions regarding the fundamental nature of
genuine empathy and alert us to the possibility that medical
students may learn that it pays to subscribe to the view that
if a person does not feel empathy, he or she can fake it.

(Disponível em: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ medu.12232. Acesso em: 06 fev. de 2022)

According to the text, we can conclude that: