An Empathy and Arts Curriculum During a Pediatrics Clerkship: Impact on Student Empathy and Behavior.

INTRODUCTION

Empathy is critical within medicine and improves patient outcomes and satisfaction. Empathy declines during the clerkship years due to the hidden curriculum, where students observe emotional distancing and desensitization by providers. Studies show arts curricula can preserve empathy but are limited by sample bias and preclerkship occurrence. We implemented and evaluated a brief pediatric clerkship arts curriculum to improve empathic behaviors.

METHODS

We created two 1-hour required small-group sessions for pediatric clerkship medical students. The first session paired arts observation techniques with various paintings. The students then applied these techniques to video-based simulated patient interactions in the second session. We used the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ) and an empathy behavior checklist (EBC) as pre/post assessments to gauge self-reported empathy and empathetic behaviors. We compared responses of learners who attended the sessions (curriculum group) to learners unable to attend (control group).

RESULTS

Thirty-four students participated in the curriculum; 19 were in the control group. Neither the control nor the curriculum group had a significant change in pre/post TEQ scores. Students with pre-TEQ scores less than 45 who participated in the curriculum had significant improvement in post-TEQ scores compared to their control group counterparts ( = .02). On the EBC, there was a significant difference between the curriculum and control groups for those who explored more about the child/family's experience ( < .05).

DISCUSSION

Our work suggests that a brief clerkship arts curriculum is useful for improving self-reported empathy ratings and empathetic skills, particularly for students identified as having below-average empathy.