Art-making in a family medicine clerkship: how does it affect medical student empathy?

BMC Medical Education

Vivian TW Chau¹  Cindy LK Lam¹  Julie Y Chen³  Jordan S Potash² 

[1] Department of Family Medicine and Primary Care, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China;Art Therapy Graduate Program, The George Washington University, Washington D.C., USA;Department of Family Medicine and Primary Care and Institute of Medical and Health Sciences Education, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, 2/F William MW Mong Block, 21 Sassoon Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, China

关键词: Medical student;    Family Medicine;    Reflective writing;    Art;    Empathy;    Medical humanities;   

Others  :  1090118
DOI  :  10.1186/s12909-014-0247-4

 received in 2014-08-06, accepted in 2014-11-06,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Background

To provide patient-centred holistic care, doctors must possess good interpersonal and empathic skills. Medical schools traditionally adopt a skills-based approach to such training but creative engagement with the arts has also been effective. A novel arts-based approach may help medical students develop empathic understanding of patients and thus contribute to medical students’ transformative process into compassionate doctors. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of an arts-making workshop on medical student empathy.

Methods

This was a mixed-method quantitative-qualitative study. In the 2011–12 academic year, all 161 third year medical students at the University of Hong Kong were randomly allocated into either an arts-making workshop or a problem-solving workshop during the Family Medicine clerkship according to a centrally-set timetable. Students in the arts-making workshop wrote a poem, created artwork and completed a reflective essay while students in the conventional workshop problem-solved clinical cases and wrote a case commentary. All students who agreed to participate in the study completed a measure of empathy for medical students, the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE) (student version), at the start and end of the clerkship. Quantitative data analysis: Paired t-test and repeated measures ANOVA was used to compare the change within and between groups respectively. Qualitative data analysis: Two researchers independently chose representational narratives based on criteria adapted from art therapy. The final 20 works were agreed upon by consensus and thematically analysed using a grounded theory approach.

Results

The level of empathy declined in both groups over time, but with no statistically significant differences between groups. For JSE items relating to emotional influence on medical decision making, participants in the arts-making workshop changed more than those in the problem-solving workshop. From the qualitative data, students perceived benefits in arts-making, and gained understanding in relation to self, patients, pain and suffering, and the role of the doctor.

Conclusions

Though quantitative findings showed little difference in empathy between groups, arts-making workshop participants gained empathic understanding in four different thematic areas. This workshop also seemed to promote greater self-awareness which may help medical students recognize the potential for emotions to sway judgment. Future art workshops should focus on emotional awareness and regulation.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Potash et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

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