Correlation between medical student empathy and a Korean nationwide comprehensive clinical assessment score at a medical school in Korea

Background: Empathy represents the ability to understand and communicate a patient’s situation, perspective, and feelings and, when demonstrated by healthcare professionals, can increase patient adherence, satisfaction, and treatment outcomes. Empathic students have stronger affective skills and can acquire, develop, reinforce, and display strong affective behaviors, abilities, and attitudes. Methods: We measured student empathy using the Student Version of the Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE-S) and assessed 3-year sequential clinical comprehensive assessment scores conducted by the Korean Medical Education Assessment Corporation to determine the relationship between JSE-S and clinical comprehensive assessment scores. Results: This study population comprised 80 males (74%) and 28 females (26%). Thirty-eight students (35%) wanted to be private physicians and 62 (57%) attending faculty. Medical fields were common future majors for 58 students (54%). Surgical fields were considered by 40 students (37%). However, no significant differences in Korean JSE-S were observed according to medical student gender, career aspirations, or future major fields.