Empathy in medical students’ clinical interactions – a multimethod qualitative study

Abstract

Medical students' self-reported empathy has been shown to decline when initiating their clinical years. However, the interactional aspects of students' empathy have received sparse attention. The aims of this thesis were to explore empathy in student-patient clinical interactions. We employed qualitative methods to analyze video recordings of students' clinical encounters and conducted semi-structured interviews. Faced with patients' emotional expressions, students would often proceed to the next question rather than engage in dialogue. They mostly allowed the patient to finish and addressed the expression from a medical perspective. Afterwards, they reassured the patient with information. When expressions were explored further, it was done in an objective and descriptive manner. In interviews, students reported an underlying conflict between relationship establishment and the obtainment of biomedical information. This conflict led them to frequently overlook opportunities to demonstrate understanding and empathy for the patient's perspective. This study concludes that students' communication skills should not be assessed without considering the students' own accounts of their behavior.