Berney Alexandre, Carrard Valerie, Berney Sylvie, Schlegel Katja, Gaume Jacques, Gholam Mehdi, Bart Pierre-Alexandre, Preisig Martin, Wac Katarzyna, Schmid Mast Marianne, Bourquin Céline
Psychiatric Liaison Service, Lausanne University Hospital, Lausanne, Switzerland
Faculty of Biology and Medicine, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
BMJ Open. 2021 Dec 3;11(12):e053070. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-053070.
Physician interpersonal competence is crucial for patient care. How interpersonal competence develops during undergraduate medical education is thus a key issue. Literature on the topic consists predominantly of studies on empathy showing a trend of decline over the course of medical school. However, most existing studies have focused on narrow measures of empathy. The first aim of this project is to study medical students' interpersonal competence with a comprehensive framework of empathy that includes self-reported cognitive and affective empathy, performance-based assessments of emotion recognition accuracy, and a behavioural dimension of empathy. The second aim of the present project is to investigate the evolution of mental health during medical school and its putative link to the studied components of interpersonal competence. Indeed, studies documented a high prevalence of mental health issues among medical students that could potentially impact their interpersonal competence. Finally, this project will enable to test the impact of mental health and interpersonal competence on clinical skills as evaluated by experts and simulated patients.
This project consists of an observational longitudinal study with an open cohort design. Each year during the four consecutive years of the project, every medical student (curriculum years 1-6) of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland will be asked to complete an online questionnaire including several interpersonal competence and mental health measures. Clinical skills assessments from examinations and training courses with simulated patients will also be included. Linear mixed models will be used to explore the longitudinal evolutions of the studied components of interpersonal competence and mental health as well as their reciprocal relationship and their link to clinical skills.
The project has received ethical approval from the competent authorities. Findings will be disseminated through internal, regional, national and international conferences, news and peer-reviewed journals.
医生的人际能力对患者护理至关重要。因此，本科医学教育阶段人际能力如何发展是一个关键问题。关于这一主题的文献主要是关于同理心的研究，显示出在医学院学习过程中有下降趋势。然而，大多数现有研究都集中在对同理心的狭义衡量上。本项目的首要目标是通过一个全面的同理心框架来研究医学生的人际能力，该框架包括自我报告的认知和情感同理心、基于表现的情绪识别准确性评估以及同理心的行为维度。本项目的第二个目标是调查医学院学习期间心理健康的演变及其与所研究的人际能力组成部分的假定联系。事实上，研究记录了医学生中心理健康问题的高患病率，这可能会影响他们的人际能力。最后，本项目将能够测试心理健康和人际能力对由专家和模拟患者评估的临床技能的影响。
本项目包括一项采用开放队列设计的观察性纵向研究。在项目连续四年中的每年，瑞士洛桑大学的每名医学生（课程第1 - 6年）都将被要求完成一份在线问卷，其中包括多项人际能力和心理健康测量指标。还将纳入来自与模拟患者进行的考试和培训课程的临床技能评估。线性混合模型将用于探索人际能力和心理健康所研究组成部分的纵向演变、它们的相互关系以及它们与临床技能的联系。
该项目已获得主管部门的伦理批准。研究结果将通过内部、地区、国家和国际会议、新闻以及同行评审期刊进行传播。
