Psychological Sciences Research Institute, Universite catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Walloon Brabant, Belgium.
Medical Education Unit, School of Medicine, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.
BMJ Open. 2021 Sep 14;11(9):e048597. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2020-048597.
Physicians' cognitive empathy is associated with improved diagnosis and better patient outcomes. The relationship between self-reported and performance-based measures of cognitive empathic processes is unclear.
Cross-sectional analysis of the association between medical students' empathy scale scores and their empathic performance in a visuospatial perspective-taking (VPT) task.
Undergraduate medical students across two European medical schools (n=194).
Two self-report empathy and one performance-based perspective-taking outcome: Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (JSPE); Empathy Quotient (EQ); Samson's level-1 VPT task.
Higher scores on the 'standing in patient's shoes' subscale of the JSPE were associated with a lower congruency effect (as well as lower egocentric and altercentric biases) in the VPT (B=-0.007, 95% CI=-0.013 to 0.002, p<0.05), which reflects an association with better capacity to manage conflicting self-other perspectives, also known as self-other distinction. Lower egocentric bias was also associated with higher scores on the 'social skills' EQ subscale (B=-10.17, 95% CI=-17.98 to 2.36, p<0.05). Additionally, selection of a 'technique-oriented' clinical specialty preference was associated with a higher self-perspective advantage in the VPT, reflecting greater attentional priority given to the self-perspective.
We show that self-assessment scores are associated with selected performance-based indices of perspective taking, providing a more fine-grained analysis of the cognitive domain of empathy assessed in medical student empathy scales. This analysis allows us to generate new critical hypotheses about the reasons why only certain self-report empathy measures (or their subscales) are associated with physicians' observed empathic ability.
医生的认知同理心与改善诊断和更好的患者结果有关。自我报告和基于表现的认知同理心过程测量之间的关系尚不清楚。
对欧洲两所医学院的医学生同理心量表评分与其在视空间换位思考（VPT）任务中的同理心表现之间的关联进行横断面分析。
来自两所欧洲医学院的本科生医学生（n=194）。
两项自我报告同理心和一项基于表现的换位思考结果：杰斐逊医生同理心量表（JSPE）；同理心商数（EQ）；Samson 的 1 级 VPT 任务。
JSPE 中“站在病人的角度”子量表的得分较高与 VPT 中的一致性效应较低（以及自我中心和他心偏差较低）相关（B=-0.007，95%CI=-0.013 至 0.002，p<0.05），这反映了与更好地管理冲突的自我他人观点的能力有关，也称为自我他人区分。较低的自我中心偏差也与 EQ 的“社交技能”子量表的得分较高相关（B=-10.17，95%CI=-17.98 至 2.36，p<0.05）。此外，选择“以技术为导向”的临床专业偏好与 VPT 中更高的自我视角优势相关，这反映了对自我视角的更高注意力优先级。
我们表明，自我评估分数与特定的基于表现的换位思考指标相关，这为医学生同理心量表评估的同理心认知领域提供了更细致的分析。这种分析使我们能够生成有关为什么只有某些自我报告的同理心测量（或其子量表）与医生观察到的同理心能力相关的新关键假设。
