Anne-Fleur van der Meer, Marleen van Beek, Anne Gudde, Marloes van Helvoort, Jelle van Gurp
{"title":"In the Spirit of Art. Transdisciplinary Education on Empathy as a Virtue for Master's Students in Medicine.","authors":"Anne-Fleur van der Meer, Marleen van Beek, Anne Gudde, Marloes van Helvoort, Jelle van Gurp","doi":"10.5334/pme.1728","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background & need for innovation: </strong>The importance of physician empathy for the quality of care is widely acknowledged, but comprehensive attention to the formation of empathy is often lacking in medical curricula.</p><p><strong>Goal of innovation: </strong>In response to this incongruity, the aim was to develop education that contributes to the formation of empathy. In line with virtue-ethical theories, empathy is viewed as a character trait (virtue), developed by practicing. This includes acquiring knowledge of empathy as a virtue and understanding its demands in morally salient (clinical) situations (virtue literacy).</p><p><strong>Steps taken for development and implementation of innovation: </strong>Four transdisciplinary teaching modules were developed for medical master's students during their four-week psychiatry rotation at Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen. Within each module, students (a) engage in discussions on empathy as a multidimensional virtue, (b) participate in exercises involving visual arts, literature, writing, drama, or clinical cases, followed by structured reflection, and (c) apply the insights gained during their rotations and subsequently reflect on these experiences.</p><p><strong>Evaluation of innovation: </strong>Learning outcomes were exploratively assessed through qualitative, thematic analyses of: 1) pre- and post-module written students' accounts; 2) recordings of student discussions after modules; and 3) interviews on experiences and self-reported learning outcomes of the drama module.</p><p><strong>Critical reflection on process: </strong>The modules promote understanding of empathy as a multidimensional virtue and student reflection on their empathic attitudes in clinical practice. Key factors include using art, connecting strongly to clinical experiences, and co-teaching by an ethicist or medical humanities teacher and a psychiatrist. More guidance (e.g. homework) may further support learning.</p>","PeriodicalId":48532,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Medical Education","volume":"14 1","pages":"619-627"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9000,"publicationDate":"2025-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12466335/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Perspectives on Medical Education","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5334/pme.1728","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2025/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"EDUCATION, SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background & need for innovation: The importance of physician empathy for the quality of care is widely acknowledged, but comprehensive attention to the formation of empathy is often lacking in medical curricula.
Goal of innovation: In response to this incongruity, the aim was to develop education that contributes to the formation of empathy. In line with virtue-ethical theories, empathy is viewed as a character trait (virtue), developed by practicing. This includes acquiring knowledge of empathy as a virtue and understanding its demands in morally salient (clinical) situations (virtue literacy).
Steps taken for development and implementation of innovation: Four transdisciplinary teaching modules were developed for medical master's students during their four-week psychiatry rotation at Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen. Within each module, students (a) engage in discussions on empathy as a multidimensional virtue, (b) participate in exercises involving visual arts, literature, writing, drama, or clinical cases, followed by structured reflection, and (c) apply the insights gained during their rotations and subsequently reflect on these experiences.
Evaluation of innovation: Learning outcomes were exploratively assessed through qualitative, thematic analyses of: 1) pre- and post-module written students' accounts; 2) recordings of student discussions after modules; and 3) interviews on experiences and self-reported learning outcomes of the drama module.
Critical reflection on process: The modules promote understanding of empathy as a multidimensional virtue and student reflection on their empathic attitudes in clinical practice. Key factors include using art, connecting strongly to clinical experiences, and co-teaching by an ethicist or medical humanities teacher and a psychiatrist. More guidance (e.g. homework) may further support learning.
期刊介绍:
Perspectives on Medical Education mission is support and enrich collaborative scholarship between education researchers and clinical educators, and to advance new knowledge regarding clinical education practices.
Official journal of the The Netherlands Association of Medical Education (NVMO).
Perspectives on Medical Education is a non-profit Open Access journal with no charges for authors to submit or publish an article, and the full text of all articles is freely available immediately upon publication, thanks to the sponsorship of The Netherlands Association for Medical Education.
Perspectives on Medical Education is highly visible thanks to its unrestricted online access policy.
Perspectives on Medical Education positions itself at the dynamic intersection of educational research and clinical education. While other journals in the health professional education domain orient predominantly to education researchers or to clinical educators, Perspectives positions itself at the collaborative interface between these perspectives. This unique positioning reflects the journal’s mission to support and enrich collaborative scholarship between education researchers and clinical educators, and to advance new knowledge regarding clinical education practices. Reflecting this mission, the journal both welcomes original research papers arising from scholarly collaborations among clinicians, teachers and researchers and papers providing resources to develop the community’s ability to conduct such collaborative research. The journal’s audience includes researchers and practitioners: researchers who wish to explore challenging questions of health professions education and clinical teachers who wish to both advance their practice and envision for themselves a collaborative role in scholarly educational innovation. This audience of researchers, clinicians and educators is both international and interdisciplinary.
The journal has a long history. In 1982, the journal was founded by the Dutch Association for Medical Education, as a Dutch language journal (Netherlands Journal of Medical Education). As a Dutch journal it fuelled educational research and innovation in the Netherlands. It is one of the factors for the Dutch success in medical education. In 2012, it widened its scope, transforming into an international English language journal. The journal swiftly became international in all aspects: the readers, authors, reviewers and editorial board members.
The editorial board members represent the different parental disciplines in the field of medical education, e.g. clinicians, social scientists, biomedical scientists, statisticians and linguists. Several of them are leading scholars. Three of the editors are in the top ten of most cited authors in the medical education field. Two editors were awarded the Karolinska Institute Prize for Research. Presently, Erik Driessen leads the journal as Editor in Chief.
Perspectives on Medical Education is highly visible thanks to its unrestricted online access policy. It is sponsored by theThe Netherlands Association of Medical Education and offers free manuscript submission.
Perspectives on Medical Education positions itself at the dynamic intersection of educational research and clinical education. While other journals in the health professional education domain orient predominantly to education researchers or to clinical educators, Perspectives positions itself at the collaborative interface between these perspectives. This unique positioning reflects the journal’s mission to support and enrich collaborative scholarship between education researchers and clinical educators, and to advance new knowledge regarding clinical education practices. Reflecting this mission, the journal both welcomes original research papers arising from scholarly collaborations among clinicians, teachers and researchers and papers providing resources to develop the community’s ability to conduct such collaborative research. The journal’s audience includes researchers and practitioners: researchers who wish to explore challenging questions of health professions education and clinical teachers who wish to both advance their practice and envision for themselves a collaborative role in scholarly educational innovation. This audience of researchers, clinicians and educators is both international and interdisciplinary.
The journal has a long history. In 1982, the journal was founded by the Dutch Association for Medical Education, as a Dutch language journal (Netherlands Journal of Medical Education). As a Dutch journal it fuelled educational research and innovation in the Netherlands. It is one of the factors for the Dutch success in medical education. In 2012, it widened its scope, transforming into an international English language journal. The journal swiftly became international in all aspects: the readers, authors, reviewers and editorial board members.
The editorial board members represent the different parental disciplines in the field of medical education, e.g. clinicians, social scientists, biomedical scientists, statisticians and linguists. Several of them are leading scholars. Three of the editors are in the top ten of most cited authors in the medical education field. Two editors were awarded the Karolinska Institute Prize for Research. Presently, Erik Driessen leads the journal as Editor in Chief.
Perspectives on Medical Education is highly visible thanks to its unrestricted online access policy. It is sponsored by theThe Netherlands Association of Medical Education and offers free manuscript submission.