G649(P) Exploring empathy in year 4 medical students

Year 4 medical students undertake a ‘Long Term Conditions’ week as part of their Child Health block. Our aims were to help students develop cognitive empathy by appreciating the impact of chronic illness on patients and their families; whilst also exploring student understanding of healthcare system organisation. Students completed an activity called ‘24 hours as a Diabetic’ where they experienced carbohydrate counting and imagined scenarios including: insulin administration and hypoglycaemia. Throughout the week they practised history-taking, examinations and observing patient-clinician interactions in outpatient clinics. upon completion of the week they each gave a case presentation, using multi-media to share their experiences. 65 students filled in either a ‘pre’ or ‘post’ week questionnaire and 31 students completed both. Prior to starting students reported feeling ‘unsure of how to offer help/advice’ and ‘somewhat confident’ in talking to paediatric patients. Table 1: Recurring themes drawn from questionnaires at the start of the week. Table 2: Recurring themes drawn from questionnaires at the end of the week. In students who completed both questionnaires, 65% had ‘some more understanding’ of how healthcare is organized and 93% felt ‘more confident’ to explore patient feelings. Whilst empathy as a concept is difficult to measure reliably, the work and discussions generated allowed us to explore and develop student understanding. With the drive for ‘caring, commitment and compassion’in hospitals and evidence suggesting multiple benefits related to empathy, this is a quality we feel aspiring doctors need to cultivate. This work demonstrates how we maximised the opportunities within the curriculum to explore empathy, increase student understanding of healthcare systems and augment confidence in their clinical practice. Empathy can be challenging for clinicians to teach and we believe more research is needed in how to do this effectively.