118 - The Role of a Virtual Program Led by Anatomists in Cultivating Empathy in Junior Healthcare Students

Poster Board Number: 118
There are separate poster presentation times for odd and even posters.
Odd poster #s – first hour
Even poster #s – second hour

Abstract Body : Background - Empathy in healthcare professionals is associated with improved outcomes for patients and lower rates of burnout amongst healthcare providers (Kim et al, 2004; Kelm et al, 2014). For students in the first years of their healthcare curricula, empathy is often cultivated through medical humanities and ethics (Jeffrey and Downie, 2016; Stepien and Baernstein, 2006). However, in an increasingly multicultural world, institutions are placing greater emphasis on international exchange programs, not only for their role in promoting medical education and global equity but also to nurture cultural awareness, contributing to increased empathy (Lerch, 2022). The “Columbia University International Collaboration and Exchange Program” (ICEP) is one such program led by anatomists. Our study investigated the impact of ICEP on empathy in preclinical healthcare students around the world. Method - Students in the 2021 ICEP cohorts, from 21 universities in 12 different countries, participated in either a virtual 2-month summer program or a 5-month fall program with peer group work. Participants (n=694) completed a validated questionnaire before and after their course (pre-Summer n=125, post-Summer n=18; pre-Fall n=406, post-Fall n=145), which included the Santa Clara Brief Compassion (SCBC) scale and the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ) to quantify empathy levels. Responses were tested for variance and co-variance against participant involvement in ICEP, using Kruskal-Wallis and Dunn’s post-hoc tests in R Studio. Results: The data show that both TEQ and SCBC empathy scores were significantly increased through the fall program (Dunn’s test, SCBC p=0.0497; TEQ p< 0.0001), whilst the summer program only significantly increased TEQ scores (Dunn’s test, p< 0.0001). There was also a significant difference between the empathy levels of students completing the pre-summer and pre-fall questionnaires (Dunn’s test, p< 0.0001), but not after completing the relevant programs (Dunn’s test, p = 0.069). Discussion - Our data demonstrate that the virtual ICEP can significantly increase students’ empathy levels. Furthermore, both programs brought empathy to a similar final figure despite significantly different intake levels, suggesting that ICEP can significantly improve student empathy regardless of their starting value. Such programs constitute a powerful tool which can improve the empathy of junior healthcare students equitably, and pave a new avenue for designing curricula in our modern interconnected world.