The role of training and education for enhancing empathy among healthcare students

: a systematic review

Abstract

Introduction : Empathy can lead to a better patient-professional relationship in the health area. Empathy is a skill that can be learned and trained, and the university is the ideal place to start this training. The aim of this systematic review is to assess whether training and education interventions have an impact on increasing empathy in health students. Materials and Methods: The acronym PICOS was used to formulate the research question. The high-sensitivity search combined indexed terms, entry terms, and Boolean OR/AND operators. In addition to the 9 databases searched, we included a grey literature search and a manual search of retrieved articles. Two researchers selected the studies based on previously established eligibility criteria. The risk of bias was verified using the RoB2 tool and a meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.4. Results: The present analysis included 30 studies in the qualitative synthesis and 20 studies that presented adequate data for the meta-analysis. An overall moderate effect on participants' empathy was found after the intervention (standardized mean difference 0.45, 95% CI 0.25 to 0.65). However, heterogeneity was high (I2=79%). More than half of the studies were considered at high risk of bias.
Conclusion: The results suggest that interventions can be effective in increasing empathy. This topic has been in the spotlight in health education in recent years. More quality studies will be needed, as well as long-term evaluation of interventions to ensure the durability of empathy enhancement.

Date of Award	21 Jul 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Célia Ribeiro (Supervisor), Maria Filomena Capucho (Co-Supervisor) & Julien Braux (Co-Supervisor)