↓ Skip to main content

Art-making in a family medicine clerkship: how does it affect medical student empathy?

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Medical Education, November 2014
Altmetric Badge

About this Attention Score

  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (76th percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (70th percentile)

Mentioned by

twitter
3 X users
wikipedia
1 Wikipedia page

Citations

dimensions_citation
49 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
192 Mendeley
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
Art-making in a family medicine clerkship: how does it affect medical student empathy?
Published in
BMC Medical Education, November 2014
DOI 10.1186/s12909-014-0247-4
Pubmed ID
Authors

Jordan S Potash, Julie Y Chen, Cindy LK Lam, Vivian TW Chau

Abstract

BackgroundTo provide patient-centred holistic care, doctors must possess good interpersonal and empathic skills. Medical schools traditionally adopt a skills-based approach to such training but creative engagement with the arts has also been effective. A novel arts-based approach may help medical students develop empathic understanding of patients and thus contribute to medical students¿ transformative process into compassionate doctors. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of an arts-making workshop on medical student empathy.MethodsThis was a mixed-method quantitative-qualitative study. In the 2011¿12 academic year, all 161 third year medical students at the University of Hong Kong were randomly allocated into either an arts-making workshop or a problem-solving workshop during the Family Medicine clerkship according to a centrally-set timetable. Students in the arts-making workshop wrote a poem, created artwork and completed a reflective essay while students in the conventional workshop problem-solved clinical cases and wrote a case commentary. All students who agreed to participate in the study completed a measure of empathy for medical students, the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE) (student version), at the start and end of the clerkship. Quantitative data analysis: Paired t-test and repeated measures ANOVA was used to compare the change within and between groups respectively. Qualitative data analysis: Two researchers independently chose representational narratives based on criteria adapted from art therapy. The final 20 works were agreed upon by consensus and thematically analysed using a grounded theory approach.ResultsThe level of empathy declined in both groups over time, but with no statistically significant differences between groups. For JSE items relating to emotional influence on medical decision making, participants in the arts-making workshop changed more than those in the problem-solving workshop. From the qualitative data, students perceived benefits in arts-making, and gained understanding in relation to self, patients, pain and suffering, and the role of the doctor.ConclusionsThough quantitative findings showed little difference in empathy between groups, arts-making workshop participants gained empathic understanding in four different thematic areas. This workshop also seemed to promote greater self-awareness which may help medical students recognize the potential for emotions to sway judgment. Future art workshops should focus on emotional awareness and regulation.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 3 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 192 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United Kingdom 1 <1%
Spain 1 <1%
Thailand 1 <1%
Unknown 189 98%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Bachelor 28 15%
Student > Master 25 13%
Researcher 22 11%
Student > Ph. D. Student 13 7%
Other 10 5%
Other 42 22%
Unknown 52 27%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 57 30%
Psychology 24 13%
Nursing and Health Professions 13 7%
Social Sciences 11 6%
Neuroscience 3 2%
Other 20 10%
Unknown 64 33%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 5. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 27 February 2018.
All research outputs
#5,985,575
of 22,772,779 outputs
Outputs from BMC Medical Education
#953
of 3,306 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#82,644
of 361,884 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Medical Education
#18
of 64 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,772,779 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 73rd percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,306 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 6.4. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 70% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 361,884 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 76% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 64 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 70% of its contemporaries.