Development and Validation of a Novel Measure for the Direct Assessment of Empathy in Veterinary Students.

Empathy is a requisite clinical skill for health professionals and empathy scores have been positively associated with professionalism, clinical competency, confidence, well-being, and emotional intelligence. In order to improve empathy in the veterinary field, it is critical to measure the construct of empathy accurately. Most research has relied on self-reporting measures to assess empathy, while some studies have recently implemented the use of simulated client encounters in veterinary education. Building on this research, the aim of the current study was to develop and validate a novel quantitative assessment tool-the Empathy Clinical Evaluation Exercise (ECEX)-designed to measure empathy based on directly observable behaviors, using simulated clients. To evaluate empathy, evaluators used the ECEX to assess the performance of student clinicians in a simulated client encounter, which contained a pre-determined number of opportunities designed to elicit empathic responses from student clinicians. Statistical analysis suggests the test has a high degree of inter-rater reliability. In addition, there was moderate correlation between average empathy scores using ECEX and previously validated measures of empathy, compassion satisfaction, and burnout. Using these methods, we found the majority of students we studied had increased empathy scores at the completion of their primary care rotations. These results provide preliminary support for the use of the ECEX as a direct and quantitative tool for the assessment of empathy. Health professionals could use this novel empathy assessment tool to teach students, evaluate teaching strategies, and improve communication competencies in a wide variety of clinical settings. Our broad aim was to examine the utility of a direct and quantitative assessment tool for measuring empathy-the ECEX-in order to answer the following questions: (1) Does the tool have good inter-rater reliability? (2) Does the tool correlate with previously validated empathy measures? and (3) Does the tool correlate with similar constructs of compassion fatigue and burnout? Our secondary aim was to evaluate the change in empathy scores over the course of a 4-month (16-week) primary care rotation (pre- to -post).

Arizona Veterinarians' Perceptions and Consensus Regarding Skills, Knowledge, and Attributes of Day One Veterinary Graduates.

The purpose of this study was to assess Arizona veterinarians' perceptions and consensus regarding the importance of items in the domains of clinical skills, knowledge, and attributes of Day One graduates of veterinary school and to determine demographic predictors for items on which consensus was low. In this survey-based prospective study, respondents were asked to rate the importance of 44 items on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all important) to 5 (extremely important). Responses were visualized as divergent stacked bar charts and evaluated via summary quantitative and qualitative analyses. Several items had a median score of 5. For clinical skills, items were the ability to formulate a preventive health care plan, the ability to interpret test results, and basic safe handling and restraint of animals; for knowledge, knowledge of pain management and anesthesia; and for attributes, teamwork, problem-solving skills, and client communication skills. The majority of items (80%) had a strong or very strong consensus measure, 18% had a moderate consensus measure, and 2% had a weak consensus measure. Six items (14%) varied by at least one demographic category. We found demographic differences between large and small animal practices in the clinical skill of ability to perform a necropsy, knowledge of large animal theriogenology, and knowledge of canine theriogenology. In conclusion, we found differences in the importance of items and agreement among practitioners, suggesting that critical evaluation of the mapped curriculum, particularly with regard to core curriculum compared with electives and clinical tracks, may benefit students and future employers.